Brian Eno - C or D?

Eno has amassed an awful lot of cultural credibility and "I'm Set Free" is a nice song, and the line "I'm set free to find a new illusion" is vaguely profound, but this is about as exciting as Jad Fair doing a Shaggs cover or whatever. So Eno won't sing for like a billion years, and then he decides that VU karaoke is the best way to channel his talents?

eno stopped not singing in like 1990, this is his third vocal album in 3 years

https://www.discogs.com/artist/634-Brian-Eno?sort=year%2Cdesc&limit=25&filter_anv=0&subtype=Vocals&type=Credits

can't believe a guy who sings all the time recorded a cover

RIght, doesn't he sing in a church choir?

Context from the RS interview:

I went to see a performance by Hofesh Shechter, the Israeli choreographer. And it was an amazing, amazing piece of frantic choreographic activity. And then suddenly, at the end, it all stopped, and a Joni Mitchell song, "Both Sides Now," but the orchestral version, started up. And it was such an incredible mood shock, to go from that franticness of the dancing to this amazing-sounding huge orchestra and smoky, big warm sound. So I remembered that. I thought, “What a great idea, to just have a change of that kind into that sort of warmth.” And I think the reason I loved that song was because of the, well I think it's a beautiful song musically, but the key line is, "I'm set free to find a new illusion." And that's what I really like. The idea that you don't go from illusion to reality, but you go from one illusion to another one, or one story to another one. That seemed to me to be a nice way to seal that record.

bonus context:

“The first time I ever heard [The Velvet Underground] was on a John Peel radio show… it was when their first album came out and I thought “This I like! This I want to know about!”. I was having a huge crisis at the time. Am I going to be a painter or am I somehow going to get into music. And I couldn’t play anything so music was the less obvious choice. Then, when I heard The Velvet Underground I thought, “you can do both actually”. It was a big moment for me.

“That particular song always resonated with me but it took about 25 years before I thought about the lyrics. “I’m set free, to find a new illusion”. Wow. That’s saying we don’t go from an illusion to reality (the western idea of “Finding The Truth”) but rather we go from one workable solution to another more workable solution.

Subsequently I think we aren’t able and actually don’t particularly care about the truth, whatever that might be. What we care about is having intellectual tools and inventions that work. [Yuval Noah Harari in his book “Sapiens”] discusses that what makes large-scale human societies capable of cohering and co-operating is the stories they share together. Democracy is a story, religion is a story, money is a story. This chimed well with “I’m set free to find a new illusion”. It seems to me what we don’t need now is people that come out waving their hands and claiming they know the Right Way.”

it's kinda corny but 'the big ship' sounds really good as a coda to 'the ship'

the last five minutes of 'the ship' is amazing

laughter. wave.

but what kind of wave
* head explodes*

'The big ship' is a particular track that makes me heart swell fit to bursting it's so fuckin beautiful.

ya i'm p certain the big ship is my favorite song ever. i want it played at my funeral

i want it played at my funeral
Been telling my wife this for years.

As long as she hasn't been telling you she wants it played at your funeral, that's fine.

Just got the special "collectors edition" in the mail ... it's a nice package, with some Chilvers prints and what appear to be some notes for the recording and lyrics. The more I listen to the title track on headphones, the more I'm struck by the found sound aspect of this -- in paretic., how much he is using it in a very different way than he did on, say, On Land. There are things here that made me actually take off my headphones and pause to make sure I wasn't hearing some ad playing in the bgd on my browser. To my knowledge, he's never done that before. In places this reminds me of David Sylvian's work with Holger Czukay, but with a bit more of a nod to "song," whatever that means.

And holy shit, as if The Ship wasn't strange enough, Fickle Sun (i) sounds like absolutely nothing in his catalogue. Or anyone's, really.

YES, it's finally on spotify! can't wait to listen later tonight

Love the whole 'Fickle Sun' suite.

Fickle Sun (I) sounds like Dead Can Dance, actually.

good call

love this album

I ordered it this morning on iTunes, will listen soon!

eno has so many different kinds of albums that it's tough to pick one as a favorite, it's more like choosing which one is your favorite for a particular situation or mood. the ship is definitely going to be a go to for many situations for me. also i am really embarrassed that i thought the lyrics were looping "wave. laughter" at the end of the title track. it's clearly "wave. after." which makes a lot more sense.

bonus japanese edition track "away" is worth tracking down

omg karl how embarrassing :/

xp AARGH

i am so embarrassed that i will play the entire thing on a loop for the rest of the morning/afternoon to atone. i am sorry eno!

question on the 2LP version:

how are the tracks divided up across the sides? i assumed it would be the title track on side 1 and the other three songs on side 2, but if there are 4 LP sides to spread them across...? the two longer songs deserve to be heard without interruption, so i don't really get it.

I hate that so much, there's just no reason for it here (or on the Trad Gras Och Stenar vinyl). Just pay a little more and get a pro to master a 20-30 minute album side, jeez.

both long tracks are split, smdh:

https://www.discogs.com/Brian-Eno-The-Ship/release/8453684

o wait I guess there is a gap between Fickle Sun 1 and ii, but side D here is eight minutes long!

this makes no sense at all as a 2 LP

yeah, it's really too bad. i guess i'll wait and see if they ever reissue it as a single LP

Or you could just buy the CD, which sounds great (and is like twelve bucks as opposed to 28)

don't have a CD player

you kids today

Playing "Another Day on Earth" for the first time in a while, much better than I remembered it. I wish he sang more often.

I'm having an Eno moment too. Spent the last few days with Discreet Music and now I'm swimming through his whole discography. I know the rock albums really well and a few of the ambient albums, but there is a ton of stuff he's done that I've just never spent any time with.

Me too - I've been way into his two Cluster collaborations, his abandoned album with Harmonia and "Possible Musics" with Jon Hassell. Oh, and the Berlin trio with Bowie. It's all so ratified, it puts me in such a calm state of mind.

c/ratified/rarified/

I would have pressed this on 3 sides of vinyl with Fickle Sun II & III on the 3rd side.
Less than 22 minutes should be totally fine on a single side without compromising audio quality.

In other news - My favorite Eno record since Thursday Afternoon

I'm still in the 'unsure' camp on this. I've had it on three times and it's sort of passed me by. I know Eno's turned this into an aesthetic, but I find something always sticks, eventually, and I'm waiting for it to happen with this one.

I've been listening to loads recently as well. Mainly Thursday Afternoon, the Cluster records and Before and After Science. On Land is probably still my favourite.

On a tangent, I've been listening to a bunch of Wackies stuff and wondering where that production sound 'came from'. It's not a Scratch, Tubby or Coxsone vibe, and I pin Compass Point as a bit later. Part of me wonders if Eno had anything to do with it - particularly the Berlin and Talking Heads records. Dunno.

Huh, dunno anything about Wackies. US reggae imprint? Where to begin?

I'm very far from an expert but the Samplers (3 volumes, I think) are patchy, but when they're gold, they're gold. Bullwackie's All Stars are great, anything with Horace Andy (the re-released Dance Hall Style is killer, as is the Love Hangover single) and my personal favourite is probably the Junior Delahaye Reggae/Reggae Showcase album. He was an engineer for the label and played drums on a whole bunch of releases (they had the inevitable house band). The production is deep and flat, I suppose, eschewing the traditional reggae warmth for something more tectonic and synthetic. It's no accident that the Basic Channel dudes started to re-release a bunch of Wackies stuff. Rhythm and Sound are something of a tribute act, really (albeit an oblique one).

Worth noting that while The Ship is getting a lot of attention for the "vocal forms" angle, Eno has been at this for a bit now. He's been using vocoder at least as far back as Nerve Net – Another Day on Earthfeatured a handful of tracks using one as well. And the two records with Rick Holland's poetry on Warp—Drums Between the Bells and the Panic of Looking EP (both of which are on Tidal but not Spotify)—have a bunch of interesting treatments of his voice and others.

Worth noting that while the Holland records were pretty roundly dismissed when they came out (including by me as I have a limited capacity for poetry readings), I'm actually finding both to be pretty interesting works and engaging listens – in large part because of the vocal treatments, which range from straight readings intoned by prim English ladies to harmonized vocoder tracks that feel of a piece with some of Laurie Anderson's work, to tracks read, sung and duetted with Eno's own voice which I always enjoy hearing. The music is quite varied as well, from LUX-ish ambient, to Curiosities-oriented dork electronica, to some refreshingly lyrical stuff. A couple of my favorites from those records:

https://youtu.be/fE28jM5Ywls

https://youtu.be/yx288P_Yd7Y

On when I get in last night:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b079z9vx/hardtalk-brian-eno-artist-and-musician

G'damn truncated YT links:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fE28jM5Ywls&feature=youtu.be

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yx288P_Yd7Y&feature=youtu.be

Wackies is/was straight up Bronx by way of Kingston, Jamaica. I doubt they were checking on Eno or TH for direct inspiration.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_mkhhAQ0z5g

I don't understand the fuss about this album at all. His treated vocoder voice is just terrible, it sounds so asexual, so totally devoid of human feeling. I get the impression some kind of God hovering above is singing here, that is so awful. And melody wise this is very weak again. It totally passes me by. The last album I truly enjoyed by him was On Land, it has been a while...

I don't think it's as simple as vocoder. It's a combo of sort of self generating treatments, robo text and cut ups. Plus his now lower register. Changes it from singing to something stranger, IMO, the same way his old technique of say putting a bass drum through a wah wah was fresh.

I've slowly been working my way chronologically through Eno's discography over the last few weeks and have been amazed at how consistently brilliant it has been. Just got to 1992's Nerve Net and now you can disregard my first sentence. Woof!

don't understand people's problem with that album. I thought it was thrilling at the time and I still like most of it. I guess I prefer the My Squelchy Life version more now but only because it's less familiar.

and don't forget the Shutov Assembly came out at almost the same time, and that's a beautiful album.