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Kid606 Covers Brian Eno’s “Discreet Music”

Photo ALEX THE BROWN

Miguel De Pedro has dabbled in ambient music before (see: such introspective Kid606 listens as Resilience and PS I Love You), but he’s never embraced wide open spaces and the power of silence quite like he does on next month’s Bored of Excitement LP. Due out May 19th through the producer’s own Tigerbeat6 label, it’s inspired in part by the recovery process De Pedro went through after leaving Berlin and relocating to LA. Not to mention Brian Eno’s seminal “Discreet Music” piece, which De Pedro decided to cover in the lead-up to his latest Kid606 release.

Here’s what he had to say about it, along with a world premiere of the Discreet Music EP:

“Discreet Music” was the main inspiration for me to make the album ‘Bored of Excitement’. After listening to it at least a hundred times—usually before bed and in the morning upon waking up—I eventually read about how Eno was inspired to create “Discreet Music” while healing from an automobile accident. At this time in my life I was in a similar bedridden state and I was inspired to start making my first ‘real’ ‘ambient’ album, with no beats, no glitches, no song titles, no samples. And this turned into ‘Recollected Ambient Works Vol. 1 : Bored of Excitement’.

To commemorate this new release and pay respect to Brian Eno for all the inspiration, I remade “Discreet Music” using the same processed piano setup I used for ‘Bored of Excitement’. When I put my cover to the test by listening to it in the morning and before bed I found that it worked great in the morning, but the speed and velocity at which the notes hit was too stimulating and engaging to make for a good pre-bedtime Listen. So I made an 80-minute ‘bedtime version’ which is about a third of the tempo of the original. Many notes were rearranged and Lots of spatial and dynamics processing was added until it became the perfect piece to fall asleep to.

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