Passengers (side project)
| Original Soundtracks 1 | |||||
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| Studio album by Passengers | |||||
| Released | 6 November 1995 | ||||
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| Genre | Experimental, ambient, electronica | ||||
| Length | 58:10 | ||||
| Label | Island | ||||
| Producer | Brian Eno | ||||
| U2 chronology | |||||
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| Brian Eno chronology | |||||
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| Singles from Original Soundtracks 1 | |||||
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| Professional ratings | |
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| Review scores | |
| Source | Rating |
| Allmusic |   |
| The Boston Globe | (favourable) |
| Entertainment Weekly | (B) |
| Hot Press | (10/12) |
| The Los Angeles Times |  |
| Rolling Stone | |
Original Soundtracks 1 is a 1995 album recorded by U2 and Brian Eno, as a side project, under the pseudonym Passengers. It is a collection of songs written for mostly imaginary films (the exceptions being songs for Ghost in the Shell, Miss Sarajevo, and Beyond the Clouds).
According to Eno, near the end of U2 1993's Zooropa recording sessions the band hit "a stone wall". At that point, Eno suggested to do some improvising sessions "just turn the tape on and play, so we were working with a broad brush rather than the one-hair brushes we'd been using. It was designed to open us up a little".
The recordings were so fruitful that Eno proposed more. After the Zoo TV Tour, the band returned to the studio - without an agenda or a specific project in mind. Their original intention was to record a soundtrack for Peter Greenaway's 1996 film The Pillow Book. Though the plan did not come to fruition, Eno suggested they continue recording for imaginary films. From the sessions' twenty-five hours of taped experimentation came Soundtracks, which reflects both the band's pop instincts and Eno's predilection for ethereal, ambient music that moves slowly and doesn't demand conscious attention.
At this time, the US charts were dominated by movie soundtrack albums and singles. Once Eno pointed out that it would not be a real ploy for radio airplay, but a spoof of one, U2 agreed to the concept.
U2 had frequently improvised in the past, and in the Original Soundtracks 1 sessions they engaged in free-form jamming to video clips from various films. Eno stated, "Listening to the original improvisations as they came off the floor, you feel the excitement of the process ... You have to be careful not to disturb the organic flow of the thing." The group brought in producer Howie B to cut down and mix some of the tracks after several hours of jam sessions had been recorded.
Part of the group's intent in creating Original Soundtracks 1 had been to make a "night-time" record. Lead vocalist Bono said, "It feels like it's been set on the bullet train in Tokyo. Every record has a location, a place where you enjoy listening to it, whether that be a bedroom or a club, well this record location is a fast train. It's slo-mo music though. But it has an odd sense of speed in the background." He also noted that when creating works for soundtracks the visual suggestion from the music is more important than the story told by the lyrics. With this in mind the band had tried to create "visual music" when recording, continuing a trend that began with their 1993 song "Zooropa".
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