Home · Politics · Sep 9 archive
Brian Eno's Opal Records to Relaunch After 30 Years
Confirmed
In Short: Opal Records, founded by Brian Eno in 1988, is set to return with new releases celebrating its past and future.
Opal Records, the label founded by Brian Eno in 1988, is returning after more than three decades, according to Classic Pop Magazine. Eno described Opal as a label for outsiders, mapping much of what ambient, generative, and boundary-crossing music would become. New releases are planned, celebrating the label's past and forging its future.
Eno put the label on hiatus in 1991 to focus on his own work, and the catalogue moved to All Saints Records. Now, to mark the announcement, he has shared two previously unreleased live performances. The first release from the reactivated Opal is a reissue of Eno’s Another Day on Earth (2005) and a collaboration with J. 'Caught Between' and 'Persis' were filmed live at Coliseu do Porto and Naeba Ski Resort, respectively.
The relaunch of Opal Records comes as Eno reflects on the distinctive artists who contributed to the label's unique sound. New releases are set to celebrate the label's past and forge its future, marking a return to the artistic world that Opal Records once represented.
What's confirmed
- Brian Eno, describing Opal in 1988, said: “If someone asks me what the Opal artists have in common I’m hard pressed to find a simple answer. I suppose I could say that each is distinctive, not only from each other, but also from the various mainstreams of modern music: it is a label for outsiders. Such a description might appear to condemn to permanent obscurity the artists to whom it is applied. But popular music has always drawn its strength and richness both from the centre – from the Beatles, for example – and from the edges – like the Velvet Underground. And sometimes the tables suddenly turn and what was on the outside shows up very close to the centre. ” Opal was never a conventional record label.
- New releases are also planned, celebrating the label’s past and forging its future.
- In its first, brief run between 1988 and 1991, it released albums by Brian Eno, Roger Eno, Harold Budd, Laraaji, Djivan Gasparyan, Hugo Largo, Zvuki Mu, Daniel Lanois, Jon Hassell and John Cale – an alliance of artists who mapped much of what ambient, generative and boundary-crossing music would become.
What's still developing
- Mamdani's office released an initial trove of approximately 170,000 pages of records, including documents found in 68 boxes at the Department of Environmental Protection in 2025 that date back to the aftermath of the 9/11 attacks.
- The records show that asbestos was detected at some locations at levels below applicable cleanup or exposure benchmarks and at others at levels that appeared to exceed them; health authorities have said there is no known safe level of asbestos exposure.
- But EPA litigation records show that asbestos contamination remained in some Lower Manhattan apartments months after the cleanup work began.
- New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani released more than 170,000 pages of records Tuesday that call into question public claims that the air around Ground Zero was safe to breathe following the 9/11 attacks.
- The records release comes just days before the 25th anniversary of the 9/11 terrorist attacks in which 2,977 people were killed.