---------- Forwarded message ----------
Date: Thu, 7 Dec 95 20:36 WET
From: eye WEEKLY <eye5@interlog.com>
To: eye-music@bronze.interlog.com, eye-l@bronze.interlog.com
Newgroups: eye.news, rec.music.reviews
Subject: ON DISC: Eno, eh?
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eye WEEKLY December 7 1995
Toronto's arts newspaper .....free every Thursday
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ON DISC ON DISC
PASSENGERS
Original Soundtracks 1
Island/A&M/PolyGram
ENO/WOBBLE
Scanner
All Saints/Virgin/Emi
BRIAN ENO
The EG Records Catalog
Virgin/EMI
by
JASON ANDERSON
Before discussing Mr. Brian Eno's two discs of freshly baked goods,
I'm searching for something New and Intelligent to say about the Eno
back-catalog on EG Records, now re-released on Virgin/EMI as single
discs. There may not be, but what the hell.
After art school, young Brian gave up on his dreams of becoming an
experimental orthodontist and then helped found Roxy Music. Fired
after Bryan Ferry objected to his feather boa, Eno began a career as a
non-musician and big thinker, a Vegas dealer of Oblique Strategies
cards and a collaborator pivotal in the careers of David Bowie, U2,
the Talking Heads and, er, James. Twenty years on, the four "rock"
albums -- Here Come The Warm Jets, Taking Tiger Mountain (By
Strategy), Another Green World and Before And After Science -- still
comprise one of the most phenomenal artistic hot streaks in music.
Warm Jets ('73) and Taking Tiger Mountain ('74) are full of songs that
pack more ideas in a 15-second passage than 99 per cent of us have in
a good year -- surrealism you can dance to... and how.
But even as he reigned as the post-Roxy art rock king, Eno's interest
in environmental/experimental sounds was quickly developing. Re-
released last year as a two-fer are the mostly mellow albums with
Robert Fripp -- No Pussyfooting and Evening Star. The latter dates to
'75, around the same time as Another Green World -- on which Eno's pop
craft is at its most serene and the majority of the tracks are
exquisite, vocal-free shimmers -- and Discreet Music, often cited as
the first "ambient" album.
Discreet Music seems duller than dishwater now -- indeed, the
usefulness of nearly everything after 1977's Before And After Science
(a truly madcap, dark and essential record) is questionable, and it's
hard to see how anyone but the dearest aesthete could feel passionate
about these albums. Music For Airports ('78) is compellingly austere
relative to the work of the current generation of ambient technicians,
but the same year's Music For Films is pointless as only this music
can be (it actually seems to lose something without the crackle on my
vinyl).
The next phase of albums is devoted chiefly to collaborations --
Fourth World Vol. 1 with trumpeter Jon Hassell is touch-and-go, but
The Pearl and The Plateaux Of Mirror with Harold Budd are appealing
because of the more emotionally engaging nature of Budd's piano
twaddle.
Into the '80s and up to the eve of Eno's re-engagement with mass
culture as producer of U2's The Unforgettable Fire, Ambient 4: On Land
and Thursday Afternoon mark a nadir for Eno's noodling (Apollo with
Daniel Lanois is the best of this lot, though it's not on Virgin's
release schedule).
And then he's back in the mainstream, though his impact is felt
equally through the production work of surrogate muso Lanois.
Interesting (Wrong Way Up with John Cale and Nerve Net) and dreadful
(Neroli) discs follow, but the peak of the last decade of Eno-dom is
U2's Zooropa, on which the lads discover the meaning of fun as Eno
feeds ideas that date back to Warm Jets into the world's biggest rock
act.
The Passengers' Original Soundtracks 1 sees Eno joining U2 for a
collection of largely bogus film scores (at least I hope so -- if some
of the films described in the liner notes are genuine, cinema is lost
to us forever). The album has its moments, even when weighed down
(oof) by the presence of Luciano Pavarotti (what is that man after,
anyway?). "Miss Sarajevo" is pure lunacy, and on songs like "Corpse,"
Bono displays a sense of humor without implying, "Hey, it's me, Bono!
I have a sense of humor!" Plenty of bass in your face amidst some
chilling set-pieces.
The woofers go through even greater abuse for Spinner, Eno's first
collaboration with mega-bassist Jah Wobble, who, like Eno, must've run
out of other people to work with. Low-key where Original Soundtracks 1
is arch, the fact that Spinner sounds like late-period Can isn't
surprising considering the presence of both Wobble (a vet of a few
post-Can Holger Czukay records) and Can drummer Jaki Leibeziet. The
groove is the thing, even if the proceedings are much too arty to
approach funk proper. The interaction between Eno and Wobble on a song
like "Marine Radio" is a bit reminiscent of the Eno/Budd records in
that the egghead is forced into his partner's propensity for the
intangible "feel." But Spinner is not as entertaining as Original
Soundtracks 1 nor as powerful as Eno/Bowie's Outside, which sounds a
helluva lot better today than it did three months ago. And that's one
way of saying that, whatever else may apply, Eno's work certainly ages
well.
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