Brian Eno - C or D?

^^^i think eno himself would approve of this experiment.

'strong flashes of light' is actually denser, with a lot more going on -- 'no one receiving' is the track that sounds stripped down, even with the vocals.
i know what you mean, "strong flashes of light" might well be more dense and is definitely faster. it is an exercise in computer music, it misses the human touch. it has no tune and no soul. just a mechanic rhythm which is repeated ad nauseam. it's kind of aseptic. like a lot of the stuff eno has done from ambient on.

concerning the new one, i preferred the one before. it had some interesting tracks. the new release seems to lack inspiration. the speaking voices don't really help.

it is an exercise in computer music, it misses the human touch.

eh? there's no computer music in that track at all--it's all guitar/bass/drums, of the non-synthesized variety

really? i would have sweared... then it is maybe my shitty computer loudspeakers. but still the track is a. extremely repetitive b. has no tune c. is a pale copy of "no one receiving" d. as it was recorded after it has "no one receiving" written all over it but it is just not as good, i think

i think eno's accident had positive and negative side-effects. inventing ambient was positive. at least in the beginning though it got boring and repetitive soon. but somehow he lost his craziness, his creativity which was at full force in the first four solo albums (not counting discreet music). afterwards he never came back to that ingenious pop songwriting. he produced bands i cared for before they were produced (early live and rough talking heads, the first u2) but who became really shit later when they had producers like eno. that he produced coldplay i cannot forgive him. how deep can you sink? does he do this because for the money or does he really like the music of coldplay? somehow i'd prefer it was the former but i am not sure. his own releases were occasionally okayish (eg the collab with john cale) but most of it was forgettable. can it be that it took him so much energy to learn and master new music technology that he wasted his time fiddling around and that he did not have the time and calm to make real music instead of just programming sounds? from 1973-1975 he was god but after that he became a philosopher.

so you don't like Remain In Light or Music For Airports? I cannot understand that.

I will agree that his work becomes problematic and self-referential somewhere around that flood of subscriber-only ambient releases like Bell Studies, Kite Stories, and White Cube. And that the last two solo records have been interesting failures for the most part. But until the early 90's this dude was still firing on all cylinders imo.

Also, I mentioned this somewhere else on ILM, but some of his best stuff from the past 15 years is unreleased - the Lanzarote & Mt, Fuji shows with Peter Schwalm, the Nile videogame soundtrack, and the Sushi-Roti-Reibekuchen set with Schwalm and Holger Czukey (tyler I mistakenly told you it was Leibezeit, I was wrong).

lolll, you set off a bout of furious googling with that mistake. still, would love to hear the czukay show! what year is it from?

1998, I'll send it along!

those are on the instrumentals box set also.

(those three tracks)

the last record i love without reservation is "my life in the bush of ghosts". "on land" is my favourite ambient album by him but after that there is only occasionally a track here and there, no album anymore which i can fully embrace. i am not too familiar with "remain in light", it's definitely an important record but i think what has always put me off was the extreme funkiness. a style i used to be very cold about when it was blossoming around 1980. these days i almost like it as much as soul, how personal preferences change over the years. it does not surprise that his best stuff is unreleased, it confirms again that musicians don't have a clue which is their best music.

Ludicrous to consider Eno anything but classic. However, one of the ABSOLUTE best Eno tracks comes from June 1, 1974 where Ayers' incomparable bassline could've made "...Warm Jets" a far greater effort (and i already love it).

so i posted that winkies show that sleeve so nicely provided me with: http://ow.ly/5zWju
he wasn't kidding about the sound quality, but the show is fab nonetheless.

thanks tylerw!

For the longest time I was an Eno obsessive, a completist, but his last few releases have left me so non-plussed I've sort of given up. If anything I like generative works like Bell Studies better than these more considered recent records. I still love his thinking, lectures, etc.

I just posted the flac version of that show if anyone really really needs it...

shardsofbeauty.blogspot.com

oh cool, i edited my post to let the people know! and thanks again. despite the lo-fi, it's still incredible stuff.

yeah, it's such an historic document that the quality is irrelevant (although as you noted we can still dream of something better).

sympathize with alex, as i love eno's early work unreservedly. on the basis of his time in roxy music and the run from warm jets through my life in the bush of ghosts, i consider him one of my favorite 20th century musicians and composers. i include in that "run" his first few ambient solo albums and his collaborations with robert fripp and cluster (et al), as well as his brilliant production work, especially for the talking heads.

i sadly agree, though, that after those first 10 years (71/72 - 81/82, or thereabouts), his career has become a series of small but increasing disappointments. he's never returned to the astonishing pop experiments with which he began his career, which is fine, his choice, but he also seems to have lost his knack for finding interesting, challenging artists working at or toward their peak powers to produce and with whom to collaborate. i respect U2, and his work with that band was obviously important to all concerned, but those albums were never important to me, personally. recent productions for the likes of laurie anderson, david bowie, sinead o'connor, david byrne and grace jones might look good on paper, but rarely resulted in inspired music.

imho Laurie Anderson's "Bright Red" is far from uninspiring, but it was also almost 20 years ago. also, what is up with people ignoring Wrong Way Up in this chronology? that record is great.

(not a dis on you mr. c, just defending some of the 90's work)

yeah wrong way up is pretty classic. haven't really kept up with a lot of the more recent stuff though.

The new record is mostly a bore.

It's possible I don't care much for his ambient, "experimental" works anymore; it's also possible he can't record compelling ones.

I did like Everything That Happens Will Happen Today though.

WWU is marvelous!

It's not a coincidence that so much of his recent output is collaborative/improv based. He's coasting.

also, what is up with people ignoring Wrong Way Up in this chronology? that record is great.

― sleeve, Friday, July 8, 2011 1:52 PM (29 minutes ago) Bookmark

oh shit yeah. one of the best things he's ever done. overlooked it due to persistent brane holes. shoots to shit the argument that he's never returned to avant-pop, but it's also the last outpost (that i know of). cale was on something of a collaborative roll at the time, what with songs for drella.

just noticed that all traces of "the accident" and its influence on the orgins of ambient have been scrubbed from eno's wikipedia page. relevance...

i still like nerve net.

It's not a coincidence that so much of his recent output is collaborative/improv based. He's coasting.

but his music was always collaborative, from the start! look back at those early records: there are long lists of people who played on them, improvised on them, worked on them: he wasn't a lone genius working by himself

it's his collaborators' fault! leo abrahams, you are no, ummm, phil collins!

Weren't there some great mutant pop tracks unique to the Vocal box, recorded in the early 90s?

(And, for me, "Bright Red" was considered a failure for Laurie A - it had neither the pop sense nor the sheer oddness of her previous work)

He's always been collaborative, in the sense that he allowed his contributors great freedom, but he remained the director, as such. Those are Brian Eno solo albums, not Eno/Manzenera/Speeding/Jones/Collins albums or whatever. But begining with that Peter Schwalm album he's been stuck in this rut of credited collaborations (the pretty good recent Byrne aside) that have offered this muddled mix of MIDI jazz and ambient music sort of akin to the less interesting bits of Nerve Net. I've always thought Eno's greatest gift was as a vocalist/vocal arranger, and now that he barely sings his unique take on melody has fallen by the wayside. Another Day on Earth was at least a reminder of what he was capable of. These last two on Warp, on the other hand, I can't imagine are conspicuously different than the stuff he must have sitting around in the vaults (see also: those two volumes of "Curiosities" that Eno couldn't even bother to curate and cull himself).

I feel so differently about the guy. If anything, he's a better example of a recording-artist-aging-gracefully than any other I can think of.
I rate Bowie's "Outside"-- Eno's sole production credit with the man-- above all Bowie's other records. Probably my favourite Eno production next to 78-80 Talking Heads.
Probably alone here, but I love most of James' "Wah Wah".
And "Another Day On Earth" and "Drawn From Life" get as much play round here as any of his 70s records.

I rate Bowie's "Outside"-- Eno's sole production credit with the man-- above all Bowie's other records.

That's feeling pretty differently, alright. I do love "Wah Wah," though. I've noted before that I think the combo of "Achtung Baby/Zooropa" and "Laid/Wah Wah" marked his last real impact as a producer. He's aging gracefully because he hasn't made a musical ass out of himself, but I don't think he's challenging himself or his fans, either. His line is that he spends so much time with the likes of U2 and Coldplay that all his good ideas make it into those albums, but having heard those recent albums, I hope that's not true.

Do those records have ideas?

they seem to have the idea that they're records.

I mean, it took the genius of the Pet Shop Boys to hear the ideas in "Viva la Vida."

I found it curious that "No Line on the Horizon" was the first U2 album to give Eno/Lanois writing credit, and it's also probably the only U2 album I'd rate a total stiff.

they got writing credits cuz they insisted! I think they walked out of the project until they got their own way. They could have rightfully deserved them from The Unforgettable Fire onwards, especially since we know now how much musically they contributed.

The only "Viva La Vida" you need:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7y8JyDbwmRg

prefer the coldplay, tbh

Does anybody know of an Eno track called "Cutting"...it has a line in it something like "The priest he ploughs the furry fields from Cambrigeshire to Ely" I swear no word of a lie...its from the "My Squelchy Life" period... I remember hearing and thinking it was amazing...really really funky...

Anyone know the details about "My Squelchy Life"? There's a number of rips out there in the void but some sound like they're the wrong pitch. Anyone have a source CD or a reliable listing for the track times?

I know a lot of copies out there were ripped from cassette advances, so that would account for different pitches and/or track lengths.

Anyone know the details about "My Squelchy Life"? There's a number of rips out there in the void but some sound like they're the wrong pitch. Anyone have a source CD or a reliable listing for the track times?

The six "My Squelchy Life" tracks were released on the last CD of the Eno Vocal box set: http://www.discogs.com/Brian-Eno-II-Vocal/release/691819 . It seems like he started the album still in full "Wrong Way Up" mode, but eventually found the non-songlike space jazz instrumental pieces more interesting and went that way for "Nerve Net", and those six songs wouldn't have fit as well on that record (which is a shame, they're great)

There are two or three "Squelchy" tracks that are not on "Nerve Net" or the boxed set.

One from the boxed set is on Another Day on Earth...

That song, "Under," was actually from the "Cool World" soundtrack!

http://unheard78.blogspot.com/2010/10/brian-eno-my-squelchy-life.html

There are two or three "Squelchy" tracks that are not on "Nerve Net" or the boxed set.

Thanks for the link! Kind of looking forward to this. when 'vocal II' came out I borrowed it from a friend -- the rare stuff on disc 3 was the sole reason to invest in the whole box, and I passed on it. but I downloaded the tracks a few years ago and in an iTunes context I have really grown to enjoy them.