What began as quietly ordinary studio sessions grew into a remarkably intimate collaboration between Brian Eno and Beatie Wolfe. Rather than grand gestures, their process was rooted in the quotidian: Wolfe bicycling through London parks to reach Eno’s studio, the two rummaging through pawn shops for an uncommon instrument and working from whatever turned up.

Their easygoing approach—what Wolfe jokes lacked “private jets”—produced three ambient records that expand on Eno’s long legacy in the form: Lateral and Luminal, both released in June, and Liminal, released Oct. 10 on Verve Records. The projects extend ambient’s reach while inviting listeners into a delicate, contemplative space.

Those sessions also prompted an unusual inventory of feelings the collaborators kept while making the music: words from other languages that capture stillness, slow attentiveness and playful exhilaration—terms they list as part of the record’s emotional map.

Eno stresses that the work had no prescriptive aim. “The studio method I usually use is essentially purposeless tinkering—starting with nothing in particular and noticing when something meaningful appears,” he explains. That unpressured attitude, he says, was precisely why working with Wolfe felt so reassuring; both shared the same tolerance for exploratory, goal-free making.

Beyond their shared process, each artist brings a wide-ranging practice that spans music, visual art and science. Eno’s influence as a producer and experimentalist reshaped modern pop and rock; Wolfe’s interdisciplinary work probes topics from climate to music’s effects on dementia. Together they’ve fashioned music that moves inward and outward at once.

In a symbolic extension of that scope, Eno and Wolfe will transmit the entirety of Liminal into space from the Holmdel Horn Antenna in Crawford Hill, New Jersey. The historic, 50-foot Horn—instrumental to the 1964 discovery of the cosmic microwave background—will be used to beam the record skyward on Oct. 15, 2025. Nobel laureate Dr. Robert Wilson will operate the Antenna for the transmission.

The event will be livestreamed worldwide via the artists’ official Liminal page, with Eno, Wolfe and Dr. Wilson joining the stream to offer remarks. The livestream is scheduled to begin at 5:45 p.m. ET; the Horn will assume its broadcasting orientation at 6:00 p.m., with the public stream concluding at 6:30 p.m. ET while the actual transmission continues beyond the livestream window.

The Horn’s site will also host a local listening event for community members and the preservation activists who helped protect the area from developers in 2023. The antenna now stands on the 35-acre Dr. Robert Wilson Park, one of the newest parklands in the United States and a public tribute to Wilson’s Nobel-winning work.

For Eno and Wolfe, the project links ecosystems of art, science and activism. The two first connected through EarthPercent—the environmental fund Eno co-founded in 2021—forming a creative partnership that grew from Zoom conversations to in-studio improvisations after meeting in person at SXSW 2022.

“At first it was just messing about with software and an out-of-tune ukulele Brian has in his studio,” Wolfe remembers with a laugh. Those casual sessions yielded two spontaneous pieces and the momentum to keep going; ultimately the collaborators generated roughly 450 musical sketches before refining the albums.

They were particularly interested in the emotional responses the sessions provoked, and they wanted listeners to encounter that same spectrum—an invitation to experience feelings in a safe, examinable space. “Art lets you have feelings without being harmed by them,” Eno says. “It gives people permission to notice and then discuss what they feel.”

The three albums operate as a countercurrent to the relentless volume of contemporary culture—offering quiet, layered soundscapes rather than louder, compressed signals engineered to grab attention. Wolfe frames it as a small revolution: cultivating stillness and volume together so that quiet itself feels abundant and full.

Both artists view this work as part of a broader effort to reconnect people to the natural world and to art’s capacity to sustain interior life. Quoting neurologist Oliver Sacks, Wolfe notes that art and nature are central to what keeps us “alive inside,” and she sees projects like these as reminders of that essential truth.

Eno situates the music within a larger social moment: a cultural shift toward recognizing our place within a shared planetary system. “We’re part of this planet and each other,” he says, arguing that art can help people reflect on what really matters amid competing, often destructive narratives.

Despite their busy schedules—Eno joined a large pro-Palestine march in London on Oct. 11 before sitting down to this conversation, and Wolfe continues a wide range of creative and advocacy work—the two are already planning another collaboration. Their partnership, fueled by curiosity rather than a single directive, promises more experiments that prioritize feeling and reflection.

“This music invites you to rest where you are and see what feelings come up,” Eno says. “It’s not a prescription; it’s an offer: here are some feelings you could try on. If they resonate, you might change parts of your life to invite more of those moments in.”

In an era that often demands more—more doing, more producing—their music proposes a quieter, more deliberate alternative: ride your bike, make music with a friend, lift your gaze to the sky.

Watch the livestream and learn more about Liminal.

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