> ## Content Index > Fetch the complete content index at: https://www.unknowndivide.com/llms.txt > Use this file to discover other available public pages before exploring further. # Brian Eno Brings Back Opal Records: The Lost Albums, the New Plan and Everything Else He's Up To - URL: https://www.unknowndivide.com/brian-eno-opal-records-relaunch/ - Published: 2026-10-07T15:20:00.000Z - Updated: 2026-10-07T15:20:43.000Z - Description: Eno's 1988 label is back. Opal returns October 16 with two albums missing for nearly 20 years, Another Day on Earth and Drawn From Life, plus a plan to sign a new kind of artist. - Author: unknowndivide staff - Tags: Music, Culture Brian Eno is a record boss again. Opal Records, the label he started in 1988 and parked in 1991, is officially back, and its first move is a heist from his own vault: two albums that have been missing outside Japan for close to 20 years, *Another Day on Earth* (2005) and *Drawn From Life* (2001), his full collaboration with German producer J. Peter Schwalm. Both land October 16 on [CD, black vinyl and translucent color vinyl](https://enoshop.co.uk/products/another-day-on-earth?ref=unknowndivide.com), and Eno says brand-new releases and new signings are coming behind them. For anyone who has spent years hunting these records on the secondhand market, this is the good news. For anyone curious where the most influential ambient thinker alive is heading next, it is even better. ## Opal, the first time around Opal was never a vanity imprint. In its first run it put out records by Eno himself, his younger brother Roger Eno, pianist Harold Budd, the zither and electronics visionary Laraaji, Armenian duduk master Djivan Gasparyan, New York band Hugo Largo, Moscow's Zvuki Mu, producer Daniel Lanois, trumpeter Jon Hassell and John Cale of the Velvet Underground. That is a roster that reads like a map of everything Eno cared about: systems, texture, collaboration and sounds from outside the usual pop channels. When he put the label on pause in 1991 to focus on his own work, the catalog moved over to All Saints Records. Opal never fully died, though. It stayed alive as a home for one-off experiments, special editions and his generative apps, the kind of side projects that only Eno would think to run through a record label. If you want the wider backstory on that whole world, our [ambient music starter guide](https://www.unknowndivide.com/ambient-music-starter-guide-essential-albums/) is the place to begin. ## The two records coming home *Another Day on Earth* was Eno's first song-based album since *Nerve Net* in 1992, a warm, sweeping record built with a young Jon Hopkins alongside longtime collaborators Nell Catchpole, Schwalm and guitarist Leo Abrahams. Lyrics were co-written with novelist Michel Faber and computer scientist Danny Hillis, and Eno shot the cover photo himself in Beijing while staging his first Chinese sound installation in Ritan Park. Its license expired in 2008 and it vanished. Fans kept it alive anyway: the unofficial upload of "And Then So Clear" has passed two million plays, and Eno has pulled songs from it into rare live sets, including with Roger at the Acropolis in 2021 and with a 45-piece orchestra on the 2023 Ships tour. The reissue adds "The Demon of the Mines," a bonus track that was previously only available in Japan, and the [Enoshop exclusive pressing](https://enoshop.co.uk/products/another-day-on-earth?ref=unknowndivide.com) comes on translucent lime green vinyl. *Drawn From Life* is the deeper cut. Eno and Schwalm met through Eno's old friend Rolf Engel, and the album features Holger Czukay of Can, Laurie Anderson, Catchpole and Abrahams. It was first licensed to Virgin, then the rights returned to Opal and it went quiet. This time it carries joint billing, Brian Eno / J. Peter Schwalm, for the first time, and adds "Bloom (Instrumental)." The [exclusive pressing](https://enoshop.co.uk/products/drawn-from-life?ref=unknowndivide.com) is translucent cerise. The pair also scored *Fear X*, an early Nicolas Winding Refn film starring John Turturro. To mark the relaunch, Eno dropped two never-seen live videos from the 2001 tour: "Persis," filmed at Japan's Fuji Rock Festival on July 29, 2001 (above), and "Caught Between," shot at the Coliseu do Porto in Portugal that June, the first night of the tour. ## What Opal 2.0 wants to be The reissues are the doorway, not the destination. At the launch event at his West London studio, Eno said he can hear a new kind of music forming, something that is "not classical, not pop, not jazz," often electronic but not always, and he wants Opal to help bring it to people. He also said he misses labels with an identity, where the artists share an aesthetic or a set of ideas. In other words: expect a curated roster, not a dumping ground. No new signings have been named yet, so watch this space. ## Everything else Eno has going on The label is the headline, but it sits on top of a busy run. In 2025 Eno and artist and musician [Beatie Wolfe](https://www.beatiewolfe.com/?ref=unknowndivide.com) released three full albums together on Verve, *Luminal*, *Lateral* and [*Liminal*](https://enoshop.co.uk/products/liminal?ref=unknowndivide.com). They pitched them as dream music, space music and "dark matter" music, with *Liminal* sitting in the borderland between song and what they jokingly call "nong." On the page, he co-wrote [*What Art Does*](https://enoshop.co.uk/products/what-art-does?ref=unknowndivide.com) with Bette Adriaanse for Faber, a short, playful book about why humans make and need art at all. On screen, *Eno*, the generative documentary that rebuilds itself into a different cut at every screening, premiered worldwide in January 2024\. His light and video installations continue to tour, and on the activism side he co-founded the climate charity [EarthPercent](https://www.earthpercent.org/?ref=unknowndivide.com), which asks the music business to give a share of its income to climate work, and in September 2025 he co-organized the sold-out Together for Palestine benefit concert in London. ## Why this matters Eno has always treated labels as instruments. Obscure, his 1970s imprint, gave the world the first ambient records. Opal pulled Budd, Hassell and Lanois into one orbit. A third act, run by someone who still listens harder than almost anyone, could be the most interesting thing to happen to left-field music in years. Fans of label deep dives like our [Kranky Records guide](https://www.unknowndivide.com/kranky-records-starter-guide-essential-albums/) and [Warp Records guide](https://www.unknowndivide.com/warp-records-starter-guide-essential-albums/) know how much one tastemaker's imprint can shape a decade. Start with the reissues. Both are up for pre-order now at [Enoshop](https://enoshop.co.uk/?ref=unknowndivide.com), and everything else lives at [brian-eno.net](https://www.brian-eno.net/?ref=unknowndivide.com). And if you are building out the shelf, our [gifts for vinyl collectors](https://www.unknowndivide.com/gifts-for-vinyl-collectors/) list has the gear to keep those colored pressings spinning clean.