Brian Eno and Beatie Wolfe reveal their creative partnership was born “over a hatred of NFTs”

Posted On June 5, 2025June 5, 2025

Ahead of their two collaborative albums, Luminal and Lateral, Brian Eno and Beatie Wolfe have revealed how their creative partnership began when they “bonded over a hatred of NFTs”.

The two artists have been on a long journey to making the albums, which were made simultaneously and will arrive on June 6th, 2025, via Verve Records. Before release day, the pair spoke at a press event at Eno’s studio in West London on June 4th and delved into the story behind the two records, as well as the roots of their creative partnership.

Notably, they spoke over Zoom at the SXSW Festival in 2022 to discuss the role of art in tackling the climate emergency. However, they did know each other slightly before this conversation with Wolfe revealing their first encounter comically took place in a Korean karaoke bar. This led to further conversations as they found solace in each other when they were being bombarded with requests to get involved with the brief NFT boom.

Wolfe explained: “We had a couple of calls, and I was in LA, (so it was) on Zoom and various things, and neither of us really enjoy Zoom, so this one was particularly compelling and kind of kept going, and we bonded over a hatred of NFTs.” Eno then comically interrupted Wolfe to ask those in attendance, “How many people actually remember NFTs? How many people still have NFTs?”

“This was right as they were on the scene and we were both getting emails from different people saying you should be one of the first to do something interesting with this,” Wolfe said. “We just thought it was drinking the Kool-Aid.”

From there, they spoke at SXSW and later met again face-to-face when showing visual and conceptual art pieces at separate galleries in London, eventually leading them to congregate in the studio to create Luminal and Lateral.

Elsewhere in the conversation, Eno explained how their creative pursuit was inspired by chasing new emotions through music, revealing, “You’d think that the first question people ask themselves when they’re making pieces of music and studios would be, ‘Am I getting any feeling from this?’ But funnily enough, a lot of people don’t.”

The multi-instrumentalist then said that most artists “just go through the mechanics of doing something that sort of seems like music” and fall into “a sort of routine”, which has never been his style.

He continued: “If we weren’t getting a feeling from something, we moved on or we changed it in some way. I wanted always to be having feelings about it, and strong feelings, if possible. New feelings, new mixtures of feelings. That’s always what interests me, when something is pretty but ominous or awkward and loving.”

Luminal and Lateral are out on June 6th, 2025.

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