Brian Eno and Beatie Wolfe to broadcast new album into space
The pair’s third collaborative record was transmitted into space on October 15 using the same instrument that helped confirm the Big Bang Theory
Brian Eno’s new collaborative album ‘Liminal' with conceptual artist and composer Beatie Wolfe was broadcast into space on October 15 using the historic Holmdel Horn Antenna.
Built by Bell Laboratories in 1959, the Holmdel Horn Antenna played a pivotal role in discovering the cosmic microwave background radiation - the faint afterglow that confirmed the Big Bang explosion.
With the help of Nobel Prize–winning physicist Dr. Robert Wilson, Eno and Wolfe will beam their latest record into the cosmos as part of the wider conceptual framework of their project.
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“'Liminal' is set in the borderlands between song and non-song (or “nong”, as we call it),” Brian Eno and Beatie Wolfe say, “where the listener is exploring an intimate and unfamiliar new sonic world, as yet unclaimed, and still ambiguous.”
“This music, to us, feels like an exploration of new territories, imagining future worlds that we want to live in. And so it felt fitting to broadcast it into the unknown, into dark matter.”
The project brings together both artists’ explorations at the crossroads of art and science, hoping to use music as a means to examine human experience, technology, and the environment.
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For Eno, this continues a lifelong fascination with the possibilities of sound and technology. A pioneer of ambient music, he's consistently experimented with creative boundaries - from his generative sound installations to large-scale works combining light, video, and music at venues such as the Sydney Opera House.
In 2017, Beatie Wolfe became the first artist to beam music into space using the Holmdel Horn antenna, working with Robert Wilson, who modified the instrument to ensure her compositions could travel beyond Earth’s atmosphere.
Wolfe also appeared at the Nobel Peace Summit in 2021 to premiere her visualisation of 800,000 years of NASA’s CO₂ data, and has since travelled to exhibitions globally. She has recently been appointed as a UN role model for innovation.
Listen to the latest single from Brian Eno and Beatie Wolfe's new album below, and pre-order 'Liminal' here.
Annabel Craddock is a freelance journalist, follow her on Instagram
