Brian Eno relaunches his cult label OPAL RECORDS + lost albums + 2 perviously unreleased videos

Opal Records, the label founded by Brian Eno in 1988 as an extension of his artistic world is returning after more than three decades.

Launching with the reissue of two acclaimed and much loved Eno albums: Another Day on Earth (2005) and his collaboration with J. Peter Schwalm, Drawn From Life (2001) - both unavailable outside of Japan for close to twenty years. New releases are also planned, celebrating the label’s past and forging its future.

TWO PREVIOUSLY UNRELEASED LIVE VIDEOS, OUT NOW: To mark the announcement, two previously unreleased live performance videos are out today, one track from each album.

‘Caught Between’ (from Another Day on Earth) - filmed live at Coliseu do Porto, Porto Festival, June 16, 2001. Watch/Share

‘Persis’ from Drawn From Life) - filmed live at Naeba Ski Resort, Fuji Rock Festival, July 29, 2001. Watch/Share

Performers in both videos: Brian Eno, J. Peter Schwalm, Nell Catchpole (violin), Leo Abrahams (guitar), Christoph Buhse (drums), Tim Harries (bass) and Heiko Himmighoffen (percussion).

Opal was never a conventional record label. 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. Eno put the label on hiatus in 1991 to concentrate on his own work, and the catalogue moved across to All Saints Records.

Brian Eno describing Opal in 1988:

“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.”

Fast forward to 2026, that last sentence has been justified many times over. Ambient and generative music, genres Eno pioneered on Opal, now sit at the centre of how music is made and heard, from the streaming playlists built around mood and focus to the lifestyle and sleep culture that has adopted ambient wholesale, to today’s ongoing conversation about generative and AI-made musics, a field that Eno was working in as far back as the mid-70s.

Opal never signed a new artist after 1991, but the label never disappeared and occasionally put out Record Store Day exclusives, apps and other one-off experiments. Both of these reissues were Opal recordings from the outset, licensed out to other labels for the original release. Another Day on Earth received its UK and European release via Hannibal Records in 2005. Drawn From Life was licensed to Virgin Records for its 2001 release. Rights to both albums reverted to Opal a few years later and have remained out of circulation ever since.

Drawn From Life continues the collaborative, systems-based work that defined Opal’s original roster (Budd, Lanois, Hassell), while Another Day on Earth was Eno’s long-awaited return to song after over a decade of ambient and production work. As such these albums reflect the stylistic range the label always represented.

1% of the proceeds from sales of Opal records will be donated to Earth Percent.

ANOTHER DAY ON EARTH

Another Day on Earth (2005) was Brian Eno’s first song-based album since Nerve Net in 1992, and remains one of his most acclaimed solo records. It featured a young Jon Hopkins alongside long-standing collaborators Nell Catchpole, J. Peter Schwalm and Leo Abrahams, with lyrics co-written by Michel Faber and Danny Hillis. The album was launched with a public conversation between Eno and the writer Michael Bracewell at the Marble Palace in St Petersburg and its cover photograph was taken by Eno himself in Beijing, during his first Chinese audio installation in the city’s Ritan Park.

The license with Hannibal Records for Another Day on Earth expired in 2008 and the album has been unavailable outside Japan ever since. Its absence has not dimmed its following: the track ‘And Then So Clear’ has racked up more than two million streams on YouTube despite never having an official release and songs from the album, including ‘And Then So Clear’, ‘Caught Between’, ‘Bottomliners’ and ‘Bonebomb’, have surfaced in Eno’s rare live performances, including alongside his brother Roger at the Acropolis in 2021, with Icebreaker at Brighton Festival in 2010, and with a 45-piece orchestra on the 2023 Ships tour.

The 2026 reissue will be available across all formats for the first time in almost two decades, and includes the previously Japan-only bonus track ‘The Demon of the Mines’.

DRAWN FROM LIFE

Drawn From Life, originally released on Virgin Records in 2001, was a full collaboration between Brian Eno and J. Peter Schwalm, the two having met through Eno’s longtime friend Rolf Engel. It will carry that joint billing for the first time. The album featured Holger Czukay, Laurie Anderson, Nell Catchpole and Leo Abrahams, and was supported by a tour taking in Porto, Lanzarote and a headline appearance at Japan’s Fuji Rock Festival.

The rights to Drawn From Life reverted to Opal when Citigroup acquired EMI and the album has not been available since. Eno and Schwalm’s partnership also produced the score to Fear X, an early film from Nicolas Winding Refn (Drive, Bronson) starring John Turturro and Deborah Kara Unger, and the Japan-only release Music for Onmyo-ji.

The 2026 reissue will be available across all formats and includes the bonus track ‘Bloom (Instrumental)’.

Another Day on Earth:

“Grand, sweeping choruses [...] that insinuate themselves deep into the memory, but also moments of whispering intimacy - a wistful, haunting record that runs warm with understated emotion. ” - Matthew Collin, The Observer (2005)

“Eno’s cosmos-goosing masterwork – his first song-based solo album in decades – is Earth the product of another green world that keeps turning. So we’ll just listen to him crank out ambient-pop gems until he returns to whatever planed he calls home. - SPIN (2005)

“A true Eno classic.” - Jeff Terich, Treble (2005)

Drawn From Life:

“Sense-soothing head music par excellence. Lie back, chill out - you are tuned into Eno Gold.” - Stephen Dalton, Uncut (2001)

“Something of the quality of [Miles] Davis’s cathedral-in-sound ambience [...] pinpoints of sonic light set within incense-heavy atmospheres.” - Julian Cowley, The Wire (2001)

“Eno’s work can inspire arty and overly intellectual discussion, but a remarkably welcoming listen like Drawn From Life reminds one that, ultimately, he is making music to be enjoyed on a much more sensual level.” - Steve Ciabattoni, College Music Journal (2001)

Both Another Day on Earth and Drawn From Life will be released across all formats with special translucent coloured vinyl available as exclusives

Tracklists:

Another Day on Earth

1. This

2. And Then So Clear

3. A Long Way Down

4. Going Unconscious

5. Caught Between

6. Passing Over

7. How Many Worlds

8. Bottomliners

9. Just Another Day

10. Under

11. Bone Bomb

12. The Demon of The Mines

Drawn From Life

1. From This Moment

2. Persis

3. Like Pictures Part #1

4. Like Pictures Part #2

5. Night Traffic

6. Rising Dust

7. Intenser

8. More Dust

9. Bloom

10. Two Voices

11. Bloom (Instrumental)