ENO

[Thorngrub]

[Thorngrub]

NP: ANOTHER DAY ON EARTH
[shadow=red,left,300]~In lieu of standard commentary~[/shadow]

To say I felt like a spider being hypnotized & led down
a fine silken latticework would merely be honest of me.
If music could be said to be in possession of any sedative & restorative properties at all, let's just say Eno's prescription is music to my ears . . .
every one ultimately names their own perfect drug,
Eno just fills in the blank for you.

The (new) album is a journey going on a long way down towards unconsciousness, caught between passing over many worlds and just another day under the bottom line. By track seven all remaining doubts as to this album's eternal worth are gloriously erased.

The bottom line is Eno's dropped a bone bomb.
Well there's a note tied to it: my heart

[Meursault]

eno is god and god is one.

[Thorngrub]

and it is about time a thread for him is begun.

[Thorngrub]

My own beginnings with Brian Peter George St. Baptiste de la Salle Eno can be most accurately charted some where between the 4th & 7th floors of Charlesgate dormitory at Emerson college, twenty years ago to the year, in fact. It was 1985 when my then young friend Darrell first turned me on to the unique music that would later be catalogued as having discreetly begun the ambient movement. He played for me a few of the early ones, such as Music For Airports and Discreet Music. I began my life long love affair with this music at Planet Records in Kenmore square by searching out each and every Editions EG cassette of Brian Eno's that I could find - in short, the next couple of decades were spent languorously soaking up the chill tones and ambient thrills incorporated into nearly every single related project Eno happened to be dabbling his little fingers into. Just knowing this man produced early Devo albums as well as classic Talking Heads-- although a more significant credit than his more famous assignments (in my view)-- really pales in contrast to the compositional work he contributed to Bowie's Low, Heroes, & Outside, for instance, as well as the strange signature flamboyance he injected into the early Roxy Music, not to mention his work on the fripp trilogy of stars, soundscape tweaking for Laurie Anderson, and his general air of precise relaxation fitting into the background of the ordinary landscape of our lives we take for granted every day. Just another day on earth.

[maarts]

I got my copy of Another Day in today! Got tomorrow off so I can soak up this album in peace!

Eno was the subject of my first journalistic piece for school!

[Thorngrub]

That's sweet, maarts. You mean college-? I would surely think not elementary . . . otherwise I tip my hat to you, a true prodigy.

I'd like to discuss that album cover from ANOTHER DAY ON EARTH. Eno took that pic. Study it. There's a lot going on in that flash-frozen moment. The more thoroughly I examined it . . . the more I realized its power. It's just another normal business day for folks in some Asian country. It could be Korea, China, Japan, Taiwan . . . my knowledge of those language's characters is limited at best, but the answer is right there in vivid color. I like how the vendor of that glass encased cart is staring right at Eno (the photographer). There's a slight sense of put-offishness, but maybe I'm reading that into him. Now take a look at the leftmost side of the picture - there's a guy there stopped in his tracks, looking back at the assortment of people in front of the market. Is he waiting for laggers behind to catch up -? Maybe he's examining what is so worthy of the scene that some bald tourist had to snap a photo of it.

Looking more closely at the details revealed by the photo, I noticed the condition of the ground in front of the grocery store. Notice how old - how dirty, crumbled, and in relatively poor condition it is. That's the ground that 90% of the known world lives on, walks on, sleeps on. It seems to me that Eno is quirkily attempting to shift the focus away from the glamour & glitz of what we Americans take for granted of our everyday lives, and stating with simplicity & charm that perhaps the "normal" state of affairs around this planet isn't so posh and clean. That maybe richness itself is not limited to those states.

I dismissed the cover at first as just an arbitrary image to grace yet another album cover of his. After listening to the album twice yesterday, soaking in the ambience and general scope and tone of it all, I've since changed my mind and decided it is an extremely thoughtful photograph, and rings nice and true with Eno's overall themes.

The album is an "instant classic", fated to endure generations where other lesser, more popular artists merely enjoy a quick wink of fame before being blown away on the winds of change and utterly forgotten.

This is only one perspective on why Eno is the man.

[maarts]

Man, I'm under the spell indeed!

I'm playing ADOA for the third time today! Had to break it up to watch Dune, the DVD that I picked up yesterday and was again reminded how great Eno's ambient works are through the Prophecy Theme....

[maarts]

I'm just studying the cover- how funny would it be if those Chinese signs used on those boards meant something really erotic?
I wouldn't put it past him!

[Thorngrub]

lol - that would be just like him (or at least "the good ol' Eno" from back in the day). I've always wanted that soundtrack to DUNE with the Eno Prophecy theme. It is perhaps the one piece of eno music I don't happen to own. That's the only track with him on it though, isn't it -? Still, I'd surely love to have that soundtrack some day.

Listened to Another Day On Earth again, after getting home from work yesterday. What a beautiful, inspired recording it is. Already my favorite for 2005 --

[maarts]

It's as deep as Equatorial Stars. I really love the dubby elements, the washing keyboards (How Many Worlds, Under.....gorgeous!) and the (multilayered) vocals! Prophecy fullfilled for mine.

Dune's soundtrack is still available- it has the Prophecy Theme on it. But the rest of the soundtrack ain't half bad either- The Desert Theme, what wasn't used in the film is one of the most inspired tracks Toto has ever played- great piano motif and driving as the Shai Hulud underground!

[Thorngrub]

Hmmm . . . yes, it's about time I got that soundtrack.
I'll put it on my "upcoming" list, to order.

Right now I've got 2 pieces of "vintage" vinyl on the way, original pressings of:

~KREATOR's Pleasure To Kill
~CRYPTOPSY's Whisper Supremacy

And I am currently enjoying on CD:

~boyhitscar "The Passage"
~dredg "Catch Without Arms"
~eno "Another Day On Earth"
~SOAD "Mesmerize"

And spinning the following black circles in the comfort of my apartment:

~GY!BE's "Raise Your Skinny Fists To Heaven"
~Red Sparowes "At The Soundless Dawn"
~Pelican's "Australasia"
~ISIS "Panopticon"

I'm still awaiting the Stripe's vinyl release of Get Behind Me Satan.

[Thorngrub]

Ok, where to begin. ENO's legacy is enormous, of course, so I guess I'll start with trying to answer the question "Where should I start with my Eno collection?"

To begin answering that, one must first choose to:

~ either start with

+ Eno's "alternative" music, embodied in his first four solo albums, wherein musicians are prone to actually rock out (see "Third Uncle" for just 1 classic example), guitarists like Robert Fripp introduce classic scorching leads ("Baby's On Fire", for instance), and Eno lends his intriguing and oddly charming vocals

~ or else one should begin with

+ Eno's "ambient" catalogue, featuring, well, ambient music. If you don't know what that is . . . look it up. We're talking drifting music without a regular beat or standard "4/4" meter; rather, music which has more in common with incense smoke and dust motes than your typical rockin tuneage.

[Thorngrub]

Since it all started with Eno's first solo album which predated the alternative movement (and played a key role in jumpstarting it), then that is where I will begin.

I've always been a believer in "starting at the beginning" of most artist's catalogues, unless that beginning is so different and\or "bad" in contrast to where that artist ended up maturing. In Eno's case, he kicked his career off with a real bang, so I heartily recommend to start right at the very beginning, by getting his classic album Here Come The Warm Jets:



(Notice the "superhero"-style logo of his name)

This album is like a dirty radioactive bomb dropped right in the middle of a pretentious, faux-trendy Manhattan gathering of "new wave" jetsetters, blowing them & their expectations all to post-glittering pieces of meaningless confetti.

The first track "Needles In The Camel's Eye" is an energetic mule kick of neo-alternative balls-out energy and driving rhythm. The bass is ALL over the place, the song is a freaking classic, and the rest of the album just gets better (and weirder) from there on out.

Audial curiosities like "Paw Paw Negro Blowtorch" have got to be heard to be believed, and the classic "Baby's On Fire" should win any hard rocker's respect, while retaining the admiration of nearly everyone else who lends an ear (unless they are just a hopeless case).

Then we get the softer, more toned down lushness of "Cindy Tells Me", a beautiful melody replete with Eno's trademark quirky lyrics.

"Driving Me Backwards" is so outrageously freakish it will turn off many, but remain an alluring piece of sonic experimentation for the more abstruse amongst us.

"On Some Faraway Beach" features the longest intro to any song I've ever heard. The familiar chorus of vocals doesn't begin until . . .what-?- at least 5 or 6 minutes into it. Then the glorious vocals begin, and the song wins your heart then & there.

"Blank Frank" is a cacophonic explosion of shrapnel guitars, drumming, and bleated vocals that amount more to an attack than a pleasant song; it works for us hardcore freaks, but may be "skipped" by the more "sensitive" souls out there.

Then comes my favorite song on the album, practically: "Dead Finks Don't Talk" . . . featuring the eeriest vocal chorus, disturbing lyrics that edge past madness, and some truly harmonious piano effects and general all-around weirdness, it takes you on a journey from which you need to find your own way back home.

Then "Some Of Them Are Old" - - a beautiful, sad piece of music that I figure nearly everyone can relate to.

And lastly, the album's famous closer and title track, "Here Come The Warm Jets" -- I'd rather let the newcomer try and ascertain the meaning behind that on their own . . .it simply has too many suggestive ramifications to spoil it with the real story behind it. Leave it said it is largely an instrumental piece, with an epic, grandiose repeating musical theme, to which voices are gradually added albeit not comprehended for their being drowned out amidst the engines of the fuzzed-out guitar drone.

Just listening to this album should give anyone an instant crash-course in why Brian Eno is so respected, and how he came to be a key influence on the alternative movement in general. It is the best way to begin with him, and it foreshadows much of what he would later turn his egg-head to, in future projects.

[maarts]

...and I'll begin with the rest...

Now currently thoroughly enjoying More Music For Films in which the Eno takes his sketches, airs them, cleans them up and puts them on display...the eerie keyboards, dubby basses, Frippertronic-like guitars, spooky bells and percussion, odd waltzes and onomatopeic instrumentals sound like a bizarre episode of X Files in Space....
Gonna anjoy a review of For All Mankind tonight on DVD, aka the Apollo-film which featured such womblike space-classics....