Music Arcades: Brian Eno: Lightness - Music for the Marble Palace

A year or two before the National Centre for Popular Music opened, Tim had a meeting in London with Mr and Mrs Eno (Mr Eno's manager having become his Mrs). Nothing ever came of it — wise folks! — but Tim came into my office clutching the exclusive Lightness CD: "Thought you might like this, if you haven't already got it?" he asked. As it turned out, I had; it wasn't that exclusive. It had been offered for mail order via the Opal (postal) mailing list. Nowadays you can get it from enoshop.co.uk.

There are just two half-hour ambient pieces, quite slow even by Eno standards, but I particularly like the second one. It's maddening because it seems to remind me strongly of another ambient work, and I think it's by someone else, but I can't for the life of me remember who. And then there's the nagging possibility that this impression is just some mistaken déjà entendu and all I'm remembering is the many times I played this CD on repeat in the office.

I'd love to know the thinking behind what gets an official release and what gets held back for limited release or no release at all, but somehow I'd never dare ask. Last autumn I saw Eno demonstrate his Bloom iPhone app. "It's made me a rich man," he said, apparently slightly surprised, but his royalty rate on the £2.39 purchase price must have been pretty good. It was hard to know how to respond to that. "So producing U2 and Coldplay didn't make you a rich man?!"

As an early purchaser of Bloom — and thus I like to think of myself as a 'stakeholder' in the wealth created — I knew the truth: that £2.39 buys you a few minutes displacement activity while sitting on the bog, but the entertainment value diminishes after a couple of weeks. Not that I'm complaining, as I've spent more than that on a bad latte that didn't last anything like as long. But guess what? I still didn't dare say that.

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