Something between music and language

That's Bette A. in a conversation with Brian Eno about their new collaboration, "2 Slow Stories" — one of several standout releases landing on Metalabel this week. We also have Ari Melenciano's first "Cosmeage" artifact, a scholarly pamphlet on Skibidi Toilet, and AI-hallucinated ceramics from London. Plus the return of the New Creative Era podcast. Happy new year, friends. Let's get into it.

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Q&A: Bette A. and Brian Eno on "2 Slow Stories"

This week our old friends Bette and Brian are back with a new release on Metalabel: a deep release that combines music, writing, and painting into a limited edition package that benefits two charities. We asked Bette and Brian to tell us more about the work. Here's what they had to say.

Q: What does "slowness" mean to you in this work?

Bette: These stories are twenty years in the making. As I slowly worked on them, rewriting from memory, they grew shorter. Strange details persisted and gained significance, while what once seemed like a central plot line disappeared. I ended up with stories that feel deeper than my ideas—simpler, more layered, more surprising. If I had finished them quickly, for a deadline or a purpose, these layers would never have surfaced.

Brian: Usually when we hear stories, we expect the pace of the reading to be fairly even. We expect the voice to fill most of the space. What we discovered is that leaving longer spaces gives your mind a chance to imagine the detail that is hinted at in the story. The music creates a suggestive atmosphere which supports you in doing that. Even though the amount of verbal detail is reduced, and there are quite long silences between sentences, your listening mind is quite fully engaged building the landscape of the story.

How would you name this art form?

Brian: We call these Slow Stories. A story that at normal reading speed would occupy perhaps eight minutes can last four times as long. The alternation between voice and music-filled silences creates a new kind of pace that is not very familiar in stories. This seems to me a rather new medium—something between music and language.

Why these particular stories?

Bette: The stories take place in strange worlds, in imaginary towns and villages from pasts that never happened and futures that will never occur. These worlds exist without elaborate background description, like islands in a misty sea. Brian's atmospheric music holds and surrounds these story-worlds.

Brian: These are stories that allow for something to happen inside you. "The Endless House" has a very good beginning: "A girl was born." "The Other Village" has a very gentle ending.

How does slowing down relate to how we experience life today?

Bette: In a time where everything is fast, fragmented, and designed to hold our attention, listening to one entire story—and doing it slowly—feels almost radical. Giving thirty minutes of your attention to something that is not urgent, not loud, and not passive, is rare now. That is why I like that the stories are on vinyl. Putting on a record is a physical gesture. It's a choice to engage with art.

Collect 2 Slow Stories