Brian Eno Releases Surprise New Apple Music-Only Album ‘Aurum’

Brian Eno released his surprise new album, Aurum, Thursday exclusively on Apple Music, with the LP making use of the service’s spatial-audio technology.

To coincide with Aurum’s arrival, the ambient-music pioneer also sat down with Apple Music’s Zane Lowe for an expansive video interview to discuss the 80-minute album, his thoughts on AI technology, his tenure with the Rock Hall-inducted Roxy Music, and his new book What Art Does.

“Talking about AI itself, I’ve always been happy to welcome new technologies and to see what you could do with them that nobody else thought of doing with them, and what things they could do other than those that they were designed for, because with all music technology, it’s always very interesting that stuff is designed for one reason; and then people start to find new things they could do that are completely beyond what the designer was thinking about,” Eno said, though he did issue a warning.

“The biggest problem for me about AI is not intrinsic to AI. It’s to do with the fact that it’s owned by the same few people, and I have less and less interest in what those people think, and more and more criticisms of what the effect of their work has been. I think social media has been a catastrophe and mildly useful at the same time. It’s possible for both things to coexist, but I think in terms of what it’s done to societies, it’s been a catastrophe. What it’s done to politics has been completely toxic.”

Aurum marks the prolific Eno’s first solo album since since 2022’s ForeverAndEverNoMore; in the Apple Music interview, Eno says his musical archive spans “10,550 tracks,” which “equates to a listening time of 44 days, 8 hours, 38 minutes, and 28 seconds.”

Last year, an acclaimed and innovative documentary about the incomparable musician/producer/artist debuted at Sundance, with a 24-hour version of the film livestreaming for home audiences earlier this year.