Brian Eno Shares The Velvet Underground Cover

Accomplished recording artist and producer Brian Eno will release a new album entitled The Ship via Warp Records on Friday, April 29. Today, another single off of the new record – a The Velvet Underground cover – has been released.

Eno’s first solo album since LUX was issued in 2012, The Ship is composed of just two songs, including the previously shared 21-minute title track. The three-part “Fickle Sun” suite concludes with Eno’s cover of “I’m Set Free” which originally appeared on The Velvet Underground’s self-titled 1969 LP.

Eno said this regarding “I’m Set Free”:

The first time I ever heard [The Velvet Underground] was on a John Peel radio show … it was when their first album came out and I thought “This I like! This I want to know about!” I was having a huge crisis at the time. Am I going to be a painter or am I somehow going to get into music. And I couldn’t play anything so music was the less obvious choice. Then, when I heard The Velvet Underground I thought, “you can do both actually.” It was a big moment for me.

That particular song always resonated with me but it took about 25 years before I thought about the lyrics. “I’m set free, to find a new illusion.” Wow. That’s saying we don’t go from an illusion to reality (the western idea of “Finding The Truth”) but rather we go from one workable solution to another more workable solution.

Subsequently I think we aren’t able and actually don’t particularly care about the truth, whatever that might be. What we care about is having intellectual tools and inventions that work. [Yuval Noah Harari in his book Sapiens] discusses that what makes large-scale human societies capable of cohering and co-operating is the stories they share together. Democracy is a story, religion is a story, money is a story. This chimed well with “I’m set free to find a new illusion.” It seems to me what we don’t need now is people that come out waving their hands and claiming they know the Right Way.

Give a listen to “I’m Set Free” here:

Coinciding with the album’s release, Eno-designed multi-channel three-dimensional sound installations will be presented around the world, offering an “alternative telling of The Ship.” The Ship is available to pre-order from Warp Records.

The Ship Tracklist

1. The Ship
2. Fickle Sun (i) Fickle Sun (ii) The Hour Is Thin (iii) I’m Set Free