Legendary composer Brian Eno and visionary artist-musician Beatie Wolfe join forces to create a pair of collaborative albums: Luminal and Lateral releasing on June 6, 2025. Luminal is Dream music. Lateral is Space music. Nobody expected this music from these two artists. They didn’t even expect it themselves.
In 2022, Brian and Beatie met at SXSW where they gave a featured talk — Art and Climate — about how art can play a vital role in response to the climate emergency. With Brian sharing his music industry charity EarthPercent and Beatie sharing From Green to Red, an environmental protest piece built using 800,000 years of NASA data to visualize rising CO2 levels, their conversation was selected as one of the festival’s best iconic moments in 25 years. The two met again in London where they were each showing their own visual and conceptual art pieces at separate galleries. These encounters sparked the embers that is now their musical partnership.
Recorded sporadically through 2024, Brian and Beatie reflect on their collaboration of Luminal and Lateral:
“Music is about making feelings happen. Some of those feelings are familiar, while others may not be — or may be complex mixtures of several different feelings. There are many beautiful words for such feelings in other languages and cultures — words that don’t exist in English. By giving a feeling a name, we make that feeling more likely to be felt, more tangible. Art is able to trigger feelings, or feeling mixtures, that we’ve never quite felt before. In this way, a piece of Art can become the ‘mother’ for a type of feeling, and a place you can go to find and re-experience that feeling. Some of the feelings we found ourselves working with were these …
Ailyak (Bulgarian) — going slow, enjoying the process
Commuovere (Italian) — the experience of being moved
Dor (Romanian) — longing or belonging
Duende (Spanish) — getting the shivers
Fèath (Gaelic) — stillness, peace
Gezelligheid (Dutch) — warm intimacy
Ilinx (French) — strange excitement from play
Jijivisha (Sanskrit) — life lived fully
Liget (Filipino) — fiery energy, life spark
Merak (Serbian) — at one with the Universe
Meraki (Greek) — to pour yourself into something
Mono no aware (Japanese) — appreciation of life’s transience
Onsra (Boro) — the anticipation of losing love
Pronoia (Greek) — the opposite of paranoia
Sisu (Finnish) — determination, grit
Torschlusspanik (German) — fear of time running out
Ya’aburnee (Arabic) — not wanting to live in a world without someone
Luminal — Beatie Wolfe and Brian Eno
Tracklist:
1. Milky Sleep
2. Hopelessly At Ease
3. My Lovely Days
4. Play On
5. Shhh
6. Suddenly
7. A Ceiling and a Lifeboat
8. And Live Again
9. Breath March
10. Never Was It Now
11. What We Are
Beatie Wolfe has recently held a solo exhibition of her design work at London’s Victoria & Albert Museum, has been appointed a UN role model for innovation, and alongside Michael Stipe, was one of the artists on the world’s first bioplastic record, released by EarthPercent. Beatie was named by WIRED as one of “22 people changing the world” and is at the forefront of pioneering new formats that bridge the physical and digital. Beatie’s latest innovations include a visualization of 800,000 years of NASA’s CO2 data, which premiered at the Nobel Prize Summit; a brain installation which was exhibited at the London Design Biennale in Somerset House and is currently on show at the Museum of Science Boston, and a Big Oil x Methane project which won Prix Ars Electronica Golden Nica. Other recent projects include the world’s first bioplastic record with Michael Stipe and EarthPercent, a collective mail art project with DEVO’S Mark Mothersbaugh and of course, a new body of work with Brian Eno. Beatie is also the co-founder of a groundbreaking research project looking at the power of music for dementia.
Lateral — Brian Eno and Beatie Wolfe
CD Tracklist:
1. Big Empty Country
Vinyl Tracklist:
1. Big Empty Country (Day)
2. Big Empty Country (Night)
Digital Tracklist:
1. Big Empty Country Pt. I
2. Big Empty Country Pt. II
3. Big Empty Country Pt. III
4. Big Empty Country Pt. IV
5. Big Empty Country Pt. V
6. Big Empty Country Pt. VI
7. Big Empty Country Pt. VII
8. Big Empty Country Pt. VIII
Brian Eno is a musician, producer, visual artist and activist who first came to international prominence in the early seventies as a founding member of British band, Roxy Music, followed by a series of solo albums and collaborations. His work as producer includes albums with Talking Heads, Devo, U2, Laurie Anderson, James, Jane Siberry and Coldplay, while his long list of collaborations include recordings with David Bowie, Jon Hassell, Harold Budd, David Byrne, Grace Jones, his brother, Roger, on Mixing Colours and recently with Fred Again. In January 2024, Eno, a generative film about his life was screened at Sundance Film Festival to critical acclaim. It was accompanied by a soundtrack release with new unreleased songs and classic Eno recordings spanning five decades.
Brian’s visual experiments with light and video continue to parallel his musical career, with exhibitions and installations all over the globe. He has exhibited extensively, as far afield as St. Petersburg’s Marble Palace, Ritan Park in Beijing, Arcos de Lapa in Rio de Janeiro and the sails of the Sydney Opera House. He is involved in multiple activist work, such as the climate charity EarthPercent and HardArt, both of which he co-founded, as well as the Stop The War coalition. He is a founding member of the Long Now Foundation, a trustee of Client Earth and patron of Videre est Credere. In 2023, Brian was awarded the Golden Lion for Lifetime Achievement by the Venice Biennale Musica. He has recently written his second book, What Art Does co-authored with Bette A. and based upon his experience as an artist. Published by Faber, it was released in January 2025.
Stay tuned to hear more about the collaboration and synchronicity of these two talented beings.
Preorder Luminal and Lateral on CD or eco-friendly biovinyl | Listen & watch two new songs “Suddenly” and “Big Empty Country (Edit)” | Stay tuned for the digital release of both albums on June 6, 2025.
Follow Brian Eno and Beatie Wolfe on Instagram for more news and work.
Check out our Explore page to see past interviews, projects and more from the talented Beatie Wolfe.