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Comment by kibwen | Hacker News Reader

Reminder that Brian Eno authored the Windows 95 startup sound: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I3Ak5VgyEoc

Here's that same sound slowed down 23x if you'd like to hear a more representative sample of his music, it's actually fairly beautiful: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fNIfbdi41ho

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That slowed down version sounds remarkably complementary to his piece for David Lynch's Dune in 1984, the timelessly haunting "Prophecy Theme": https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t4onBqilHvc

This is cute but I think it violates the artistic integrity of his piece. The whole point of the 95 startup chime as a piece of art was that Eno took the job because he was fascinated with the idea of creating musical art entirely within a tiny time interval.

Imagine if Walt Whitman became interested in writing haiku for a little while, but because he'd previously written epic poems, hey, let's stretch out his haiku to epic length. No.

You're not wrong about the "point" of Eno's original approach to the chime, but I think you're taking things a bit too seriously and I respectfully disagree that it "violates the artistic integrity of his piece".

I suggest you watching the interview of Zane Lowe with both Eno[1] and his nephew Fred "again." Gibson [2], It's clearly apparent that Eno loves this kind of "disrespectful" experiments.

[1]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ui9TPLTV-Rk [2]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zeD0g5xXo7E

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