(All Saints Records)
Arguably Brain Eno's most recognisable
piece of music from the nineties was only five seconds long. He'd
been hired by Microsoft to create the start-up sound for Windows 95.
Though he still managed to put out a lot of work during this period,
as well as producing record with U2 and reuniting with collaborator
David Bowie. Still, his own solo releases from this period may be
amongst his most eclectic releases as these recent reissues on All
Saints Records seem to highlight.
Brian Eno is known for many things not
limited to Roxy Music, his own forays in Ambient music and production
for the likes of The Talking Heads, Coldplay and U2. Though his solo
and collaborations work is were he has reached critical acclaim for
his novel approached, be it in the experimental pop of Here Come
The Warm Jets or Another Green World, where his pop music
enter more left field and ambient realms.
Nerve Net
is the earliest of these reissues, originally released in
1992, and sees Eno taking on some of the styles he help to
popularise, merging blissful spacey electronica with strange pop and
sampled loops. The first track Fractal Zoom is not a world away from
the looping drum patterns of My Bloody Valentine's Soon, which came
out only a year earlier on Loveless. It balances a darker
ambient sound with softer layered vocals and centred with a solid
funk-inflected bass line. Whilst some of the sounds show they're age
others are forward thinking, Wire Shock has chopped up vocals
arranged into a rhythm, still a staple of contemporary electronica
whilst The Roil, The Choke, one of the few tracks to feature Eno's
voices prominently, is one of the best tracks here, with more in
common with his music from the seventies with echoes of tracks like
The Ship and On Some Faraway Beach.
Niroli is a purely ambient one
track album, named after a plant oil and made at a time when Eno was
obsessed by smells and fragrances and even developed his own
perfumes. The hour long piece of music is slight enough to fit in
along side Eno's Ambient series. Like those works, such as Music
for Airports there is still enough here to capture your attention
in odd minor key flourishes, but its submerged sound can sink into
the background just as easily. In fact Eno claimed in the linear
notes for Airports that he aimed to make music “as ignorable
as it is interesting” and Niroli easily fits the same bill
and could have been included under the same series, maybe as Music
for Daydreams.
The original cover for The Drop
featured some of the worst album artwork ever made, a computer made
image that is more clip art than virtual reality. Thankfully the
computer-indebted music that makes up the album fares a little
better. Brian Eno described the music on The Drop as jazz made
by an alien who'd only heard descriptions of jazz music and the album
mostly succeeds in creating music that is alien and familiar. It
seems to continue some of the synthesized jazzier moments of Nerve
Net over a collection of short tracks, like sketches and ideas
laid out that loop into focus before fading out. Whilst it doesn't
all work, some of the ideas like dreamy Spanish guitar chords that
ring out on Dutch Blur or Boomcubist which has echoes of In Dark
Trees are interesting enough to recall Music For Film or Eno's
defining moment Another Green World.
The Drop seems to aim for that kind of varied
experimentation but never reaches the same quality or consistency.
The Shutov Assembly is a
glacially cold piece of ambient music, made up of shorter pieces
that offer more variation than his longer form works. It's cold
textures could see it sit alongside the frozen soundscapes of
Biosphere's Substrata. On
tracks like Stedelijk and Alhondiga notes linger and echo like sounds
bouncing between the walls of a vast cavern as distant hums fall in
and out of the background, it's never busy and sees Eno push his
interest in texture and space to the forefront. Shutov
makes for a slow and solitary listen that seems a suitable fit for
short winter days.
All of these albums are packed with
bonus tracks and alternate versions, many are forgettable and easy to
pass over, but some offer interesting ideas and pretty moments.
Tracks like Prague on The
Shutov Assembly see Eno using a
solo piano rather than electronic textures creating a more melodic
take on the albums frozen sculpture. Nerloi
features another hour long track, New Space Music, made of low hums
and tones that gently shift between tones whilst being void of any
obvious melodic lines, it's ever shifting noises create a hypnotic
effect.
Even when he doesn't always hit the
mark these reissues that to their extensive linear notes full of
interview and essays allow an insight into the thought processes and
ideas that sparked these releases which seem to be, at least in a few
cases, more interesting than the finished result. That's where Eno's
brilliance lies, in trying unexpected things and taking different
routes. These albums are a mixed bag of Brian Eno's nineties output.
It does show a musical range and a willingness to explore, though not
every gambit hits the mark, it still displays a singular talent.
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