Five decades into his legendary career, Brian Eno has finally debuted his first-ever music video. The clip is for “Decline and Fall” and comes in support of his upcoming compilation, Film Music 1976-2020.
Film Music collects new and old arrangements Eno wrote for the big screen. “Decline and Fall” originally appeared in Henrique Goldman’s O Nome da Morte (A Man Called Death), a chilling Brazilian serial killer biopic from 2017. Fittingly, Goldman has returned to direct the visual for the track, drawing direct inspiration from his own movie.
A striking and cinematic watch, the clip cautions against the evils of greed using two overlapping narratives. One focuses on mankind’s destruction of the Earth for capitalist gain (deforestation, wildfires), while the other follows an assassin who kills for money. As to be expected the masterful Eno, his composition pairs perfectly with the footage in such a way that heightens the viewer’s emotional experience. Watch below.
In a statement about the dual storylines, Goldman commented,
“Our video juxtaposes two cinematic narratives set in Brazil, one of the main frontiers in the final battle between Man and Nature. The first comprises fragments of a drama about the tortured soul of the assassin portrayed in O Nome da Morte, and the second depicts a magical natural phenomena –the Invisible River of the Amazon – a meteorologic process on a colossal scale, whereby rainforest trees continually spray billions of gallons of water into the atmosphere. The video is foreboding and suspenseful. Somewhere in the vast Brazilian landscape, something momentous lurks in the background.
An unforeseen, greedy and merciless force disrupts the divine stream of life. The same force drives the hitman, who stealthily steps out of the shadows to kill for money. As rain and fire, fiction and science, birth and death, nature and civilisation, art, love and greed continually juxtapose each other, we become aware of the delicate natural balance that is being severely disrupted by our civilisation.”
Eno’s Film Music 1976-2020, which boasts a number of previously unreleased songs, arrives digitally on November 13th. A physical release on CD and double vinyl is expected to follow on January 22nd, 2021.
In related news, Eno and brother Roger dropped their first-ever collaborative record, Mixing Colours, back in March. Over the last few months, the siblings have invited fans to create their own music videos for the album’s tracks.
