In their Feeling of the Day report, a recurring segment on KCRW, Brian Eno and Beatie Wolfe explore the emotions as they are experienced in different languages, attempting to articulate feelings for which no words exist in English. Recent choices have included duende, which they describe as shivering with thrill; eudaimonia, gratitude for things going well; ailyak, going slow and enjoying the process; and dor, longing or belonging. They’re all big and existential, the kinds of feelings that require wrestling with. Where better to unpack them than in song?
That is the driving question of the duo’s debut collaborative albums, Luminal and Lateral. They frame the albums in terms similar to those of their Feeling of the Day report: They want to make music that elicits thorny and tangled emotions, the kind that aren’t always easy to articulate. Music, they offer, “is about making feelings happen,” a fairly obvious conclusion to draw. But while the uniqueness of hard-to-define feelings is the duo’s starting point, their music only rarely matches that complexity.
Eno and Wolfe share a longtime interest in the power of music to help us make sense of our inner worlds. The observation of feeling has been a central part of Eno’s practice. Music, he has proposed, should create a sense of calm, color the mood in a room, or give space for minds to wander. The idea has driven Eno’s series of classic ambient albums and generative works like Discreet Music. Wolfe, a conceptual artist whose work frequently engages with science and technology, also touches on the power of feeling—considering, for example, the therapeutic value of music for people with neurological conditions like dementia.
Though recorded piecemeal throughout 2024, both albums offer cohesive visions: Luminal is lush dream pop, and Lateral wafting ambient. Both take a zoomed-out approach, focusing less on minute details and more on the sweeping effects of their melodies. On Luminal, fuzzy vocals and tender instrumentals swirl into an amorphous cloud; on Lateral, a simple repeating motif floats, nearly unchanging, for 64 minutes. In both cases, the music lacks nuance. Their straightforward melodies rarely shift or grow; the pulse is gentle; the dynamics hover around a comfortable mezzo-forte (with the occasional mezzo-piano, for variety). The music is characterized, above all, by its restraint; it sometimes feels as if the two musicians want to create the perfect feeling in a lab, rather than let it swallow them whole.
That sense of distance particularly characterizes Luminal, a collection of balmy dream-pop ballads centering Wolfe’s feathery voice, soft and slow guitar melodies, and spacey synths. It’s striking how conventional it frequently sounds, reminiscent of canonical acts like Beach House. The album’s atmospheres feel temperate even when tackling forlorn topics. A contradiction asserts itself: Wolfe sings of loneliness with a smile. “A Ceiling and a Lifeboat” and “Breath March,” both laments, hint at the darkness of night but quickly return to cloying sweetness. The song title “Hopelessly at Ease” says it best—emptiness and excessive pleasantry go hand in hand.
With Lateral, the duo finds more layers, despite the music’s repetition. The hour-long album consists of one unbroken, eight-part piece, “Big Empty Country,” that stems from two twinkling notes, one short and one long, swirling amid a gradually expanding fog. Very little changes throughout the course of the piece, but as it continues, there’s an ever-so-slight shift in perception. The work is neither sprawling like Montana’s big sky, nor dangerously solitary like the so-called loneliest road in America. Instead, it’s gentle and a bit untouchable, a meditation on places just out of reach.
Though Eno and Beatie’s music often feels simplistic, by the end of Lateral, they’ve inched closer to the center of the heart. The emotion expressed isn’t as strong as the shivers nor as aching as longing. It’s more like finding joy in the process after seeing it through. With each repetition, those two focal notes expand a little further; with each new layer of tone, a sense of peace seems more within reach. Through the practice of listening, the feelings reveal themselves.
