Music for Films is the seventh solo studio album by Brian Eno, released in September 1978 on EG Records. His third release of experimental electronic material (the others being that year's Ambient 1: Music for Airports and 1975's Discreet Music), it is a conceptual work intended as a soundtrack for imaginary films, although many of the pieces had already appeared in actual films. It charted at #55 in the UK.

Content

The album is a loose compilation of material from the period 1975 to 1978, composed of short tracks ranging from one-and-a-half minutes to just over four, making it the antithesis of the long, sprawling, ambient pieces he later became known for. The compositional styles and equipment used also carried over onto Eno's work on some of David Bowie's 1977 album Low. Unlike Eno's later ambient works, Music for Films utilises a broader sonic palette, with Eno's synthesizers and "found sounds" being supplemented by standard studio instrumentation played by other musicians (see Credits).

Release

Originally released as a limited-edition (five hundred copies) LP in 1976 which was sent to a selection of filmmakers for possible inclusion in their work, the commercial Music for Films release was expanded to include a number of pieces for, as Eno put it, "possible use as soundtracks to 'imaginary' films". In fact, excerpts from the album were contributed to the original soundtracks of at least six films: Three further Film albums were released: Music for Films Volume 2 in 1983 (originally only available as a part of the ten-LP box set Working Backwards: 1983-1973), Music for Films III in 1988 (which consisted of work by various artists), and More Music for Films in 2005, which combined tracks from the box set LP along with tracks from the original 1976 limited edition release.

Different versions

The album has manifested in several forms, featuring different track-listings and track-times. "Deep Waters" appears in More Music for Films as "Dark Waters". "Dark Waters" is unpublished elsewhere.

Track listing

Standard edition (1978)

Personnel

Versions

Chart performance