"Drum Loop 14" (1995)

Demo Song

Background Information

Brian Eno published his diary from 1995, called A Year with Swollen Appendices. It was published as a book in 1996 by Faber and Faber in the UK. That was the year that Eno worked with U2 on Original Soundtracks 1, and the book makes mention of a number of demos and working titles throughout. “Drum Loop 14” is one of the songs included in the book.

The song “Drum Loop 14” is first mentioned by Eno briefly, “Meanwhile I was working – very single-handedly – on ‘Drum Loop 14’.” and later he calls it “Loop 14” saying, “I did crowds of voices on ‘Loop 14’, and then a vocal proper (’…out of mind, out of light’) which worked well. Bono heard some playing at the end he liked, so we dumped that over (several hours work – can’t just snip on digital tape).”

On June 6 he wrote a list of progress off songs, and in that list “Loop 14 (Out)” needs ‘lyrics and backing vocals’.

On July 10 he mentions “After they all left, we went on to ‘Loop 14 (Out)’, whose song I quite quickly lost faith in, but we put on a great DX7 bass triggered from the kick-drum (pure sine wave distorting through mike channel) and it then became a whole new thing: ‘Always Forever Now’ (from the Damien Hirst pic), recorded with Bono doing a lead vocal, E-Notes close behind. That piece is too long by half.

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