BRIAN ENO

The 1970's was the golden age of progressive music. It actually started in the late 1960's after Sgt. Pepper and Brian Wilson's great push to use the music studio as an instrument, which he did so effectively with his Pet Sounds. Everything seemed to fall into place for energetic groups to take rock music to its extreme. Brian Eno did this with this release. In the mid 1970's the economy was experiencing inflation and Watergate had just been concluded in Washington DC. The US was in turmoil along with the rest of the western world. In the musical art world of English masters like Eno, he was only getting started. He wanted to go totally uncommercial and make true art with sound. I think he accomplished his goal with this record. It has everything in an avant-garde project. It is beautiful and sublime. It is 4.5 stars on my scale. No track is filler, everything fits and produces a grand whole with subtlety and artistic merit.

This would be the final release of the three recordings that Eno did with CLUSTER and HARMONIA while In Germany with Bowie doing his "Berlin Triliogy". The first release in 1976 was with HARMONIA called "Tracks & Traces" which of course included the two CLUSTER boys Roedelius and Moebius, along with Micheal Rother from NEU!. The final two recording were without Rother, and from what I understand came from the same sessions that included CAN's Holger Czukay adding some bass and hanging out with the keyboard guys.

I prefer the HARMONIA release the most of these three recordings, but of the last two I like the one I'm reviewing now the best. Released in 1978 we get about 41 minutes of music over ten tracks. Ambient is the word, but those three vocal tracks with Eno singing are my favourites along with that third track "Base & Apex". Just more going on with those pieces, plus Czukay plays bass on that fourth song that Eno sings on. Conny Plank is the fifth member you could say adding his incredible studio knowledge and helping in every way possible. Lots of atmosphere on this album along with piano leading the way. Mellow is the word, but in my world this is pretty historic stuff which is why Czukay wanted in on this.

"After The Heat" is far from earth-shaking, but this is a 4 star album in my musical world.

Brian Eno released a new album in 2010 after a 5-year hiatus. Maybe revived by his successful recent producer collaboration with U2 and Coldplay, he delivers the quality above his 90's and early 2000 standards. The album is focused, quite varied but uniformly prefers ambiance to melody and songwriting unlike the predecessor from 2005. Eno takes various instruments to produce a relatively warm sound, from piano (electric) to synths, effects and programmed sounds. The album does not sound monotonous also thanks to the two collaborators on the guitar and keyboards. In addition, some tracks are dynamic with modernized 2000 beats. The first song is a great reflective return to the 1976-77 era of synths/piano and actually has a strong atmosphere feeling despite having no melody. If you liked it, there is a similar one titled "Emerand and stone"! The next couple of track are a curve towards sonic explorations, unfortunately not something you would return to listen to. While it is one of the better Eno's albums, it does not excel either especially for those who want to take it as a foreground music.

Brian Eno has always been a man to put atmosphere first in all of his works, whether it be his art rock directions with Another Green World and Before And After Science, or his more well known ambient experiments of Music For Airports or Discreet Music. Like most highly innovative electronic musicians, Eno has a key sense of knowing fully well what his music is capable of in terms of space and flow. His subtlety is unwavering in terms of this music, and he manages to create not only some amazing pieces of art through it, but also one of my favorite albums ever recorded in music history, that being Thursday Afternoon.

Many people would probably ask me why I'd consider this album to be Brian Eno's best work, and it is both from a musical standpoint, but also from a technological and personal one as well.

This piece is all about subtlety. The whole sequence of events can be seen as a purely simple excursion, a simple looping of an acoustic piano mixed with an electronic backdrop of synths and nature recordings, but that is what it might seem at first. This hour long venture is all random, and what you may think as a repetitious cycle of calm noise is actually a very technical display of skills, with the chords on the piano changing so subtly with each passing moment, that once it finally hits you, you realize the full potential of Brian Eno's ambient workings. To me, this is the peak of Eno's ambient portfolio.

Whilst musically, it might be good on its own, the technological side of things allows it to shine. This is one of the first albums to take advantage of the then new CD format, and so Eno decided to create a 60 minute deliverance upon this beautiful venture. To some this might be excessive, but to me this showcases the almost beautiful array of technology Eno can master, modern or not. To me, this makes Eno one of the most modern musicians in recent memory, that, no matter the changing times, will always remain ahead of the game, and it is something I have always found endearing. This wouldn't be the last time Eno would take his hand at using new technology for his music as 30+ years later he'd release Reflection, not only as a CD and vinyl; not only a seasonal album that changes its run time, but also an app on IOS that went on for infinity. I'd say the 60 minutes add to the album's whole appeal for me, being this one hour, constantly changing piece that I always find new discoveries with.

However, this album has a distinct impact on me as a person. I do not like to get personal in my reviews as I am of the mindset to show music first rather than what it did for me in my personal life, but for this review I feel it is needed. I listened to this last year in January, and I consider 2022 to be one of the worst years of my life so far. I faced many challenges during that year, with friendship, emotions, stress, sexuality, and me as a whole. It was the year where I felt truly angry, bitter, and above all else, sad in my life. It was a roller coaster that I wished never happened. But, whenever I felt a cold wavering of emotions through me, I would listen to this album at the middle of the night, fully. It started with January as I was under a ton of pressure within my school work, and it not only calmed me, but also gave me a sense of hope, a sense that everything will be alright in the end, and soon whenever I felt stressed, or under pressure, I would always try and calm myself with this piece of music. Sometimes it didn't work, I admit, not every impactful album in my life can be played every single moment, but, whenever I am in the mood, I will always play this record to give me serenity. This is an album that means so much in the long run, and it helped me get through the past year, and hopefully many more to come.

This hour long masterpiece Eno has made is in a special place in my heart. It is the album that, again, helped me get through the past year, and I think it deserves much recognition. While it may seem simple, this piece has layers to me, and it is an album that I do not think I can live without. Truly, truly amazing.

The first of just two collaborative releases by these two moments-defining icons, My Life in the Bush of Ghosts was released in 1981, released the same year as David Byrne's debut solo album, The Catherine Wheel (featuring Eno, as well as Bernie Worrell and Adrian Belew), and in between Brian Eno's Ambient(s) 3 and 4. This was likewise released a year after Talking Heads' beloved fourth, Remain In Light (1980), which was itself produced by Eno. Naturally considered on the site as 'Progressive Electronic', I'm sure we can all agree, at first glance, Bush of Ghosts is bound to be much more. And indeed, in that alone, it delivered. [The rating for this review will be solely based upon the (nearly) original album tracks.]

From the get-go, with "America Is Waiting", the specific focus of the whole album is revealed: Sampledelia, in this song's case a joyfully maximalist (if not chaotic) mish-mash of seismic Funk and apparent 'World' sonics (I'm pretty ignorant of Worldbeat at large, I'll add). Also owing to the strength of the track is Bill Laswell on bass. Killer opener. "Mea Culpa" is a wild supposed back-and-forth with an undisclosed politician and an on-air radio caller. The percussion is phenomenal. I can imagine Brian Eno in particular being inspired by the many No Wave bands which he encountered and helped showcase from New York's initial Punk movement, and I think what Byrne brings to the table is unsurprising (though not because of predictability; I'm quite happy with this). In a likewise delightfully unsurprising fashion, the sampled vocals have a definite rhythmic quality that drives the song from the start. Some of the sonic choices, in particular little trills and dings heard in the middle, strike me as Industrial, but these elements are diminished by Eno's own Ambient panache [Seriously, am I a huge Muso douche? haha]. Lebanese singer Dunya Younes is sampled on the next, the Funk-forward "Regiment", which adds a legitimately modern sound. I mean, this is still so fresh. Nice synth solo from Brian here toward the end, which itself I might guess was, at one time or another, chopped up.

Finally back to some of the excitement I felt with "America", "Help Me Somebody" has that groovy Funk and super bright guitar which is a perfect match to the sampling of the excited Southern Baptist preaching. I definitely have to put myself in a different mindset when listening to this sort of thing (and, plenty of the time, to Eno specifically). "The Jezebel Spirit" is very much of the same expression (this time sampling audio from an exorcism), but is far more straight. It picks up big time, at least, with the addition of almost phone-dial-like clangs. We initially return to a softer inflection on "Very, Very Hungry" (not "Qu'Ran", as was helpfully noted in the album details). Some guitar work nearing the end is a winning factor. "Moonlight in Glory" keeps us cool, another stronger showcase for percussion, but all in all a little too calm and singular for my tastes. Itchin' for more. "The Carrier" next begins with a chilling thumping bass, met with increasingly more elements: from spacy, haunting tones to softer (more overtly) ambient flourishes. Near the midpoint, we hear a second Younes sample (though from the same source as "Regiment").

We stay haunted [haha] on "A Secret Life", in great part thanks to its selected sample, from yet another Lebanese vocalist, Samira Tewfik. Eerie... And for that alone, one of the best on the album. To my ears, we have another No Wave-esque salute on "Come with Us". I hope the album continues to scare me till the end. That would be nice haha. [SPOILER WARNING FOR FOUR SENTENCES FROM NOW: It did.] In a broad sense (which is the position I try to take), this is assuredly Prog. Wonderful. For the original track listing, we then have our original album closer, the ethereally understated "Mountain of Needles". Effective closer. Methinks very Eno. Onto the bonus material!

With the exclusion of "Qu'Ran" as mentioned above, the bonus tracks were made available on a 2006 edition. "Pitch to Voltage" is first, with a distinctly Eastern feeling. "Two Against Three" happened; the apparently chopped up keyboards(?) is purty noice. Happy to receive up next some "Vocal Outtakes", a very quick 36 seconds of dog-like vocalization. Naturally following is "New Feet", another relatively maximal track with whooping and wailing vocals and over-the-top snare-like percussion. "Defiant" was another with less to offer, in my opinion; no crescendo, and with less-than-exciting additions as it progressed. I had no feelings for "Number 8 Mix" until the bright chiming of strings in its second half. Finally finally we have "Solo Guitar with Tin Foil". And if there was a title that made me go 'Hmmm...,' it's this'n. What does it mean? It's certainly beautiful. The warm, melodic attacks from our titular "Solo Guitar" are accompanied solely with its soft reverb. No regrets there. Another interesting selection as 'closer'.

True Rate: 3.5/5.0

Brian Eno is definitely one of most eclectic and well respected artist in the 20th and 21st century. He is a visual artist, a composer, and a well pronounced music creator. He is both a rockstar and a ambient mastermind with his style and craft of his albums to where each, even the ones that are more quiet and reserved do have a certain specialty that some other bands cannot achieve. And I like to say that Brian Eno is less of a musician and more of a artist who makes sound into his art. His early career definitely was more akin to your usual music affairs, however I think his ambient works is where he truly shines his brightest. Albums like Music For Films, Discreet Music, Ambient 2, and The Ship are all very beautiful pieces of electronic and ambient music that I like to listen to in the background due to their quiet and calming sounds. It definitely takes time to fully appreciate what these albums are and mean to people, but they are definitely meditative in their core values, and I think those values can be best represented with this album, Neroli.

This album only has one song, a 57, nearly hour long track which has been a sort of staple with Brian's work, for example one of his more recent works, Reflection being a one hour long track. This one long track is kinda hard to fully describe. Despite it's length the album has a more straight forward idea, being that it's thinking music. The alternative title for this track is Thinking Music Part IV, and so that is exactly what it is. There is no crescendos, not off the wall playing styles, no electronically advanced instrumentation, just notes being played along a synth. However this can also be more than just thinking music it can be sleeping music, reading music, music to cool your head, things like that.

Furthermore the tempo is really slow, obviously. In fact I do not even think there should really be a tempo, since if there was wouldn't there be some sort of beat. Instead I am gonna say the speed is really slow. The album goes for a long while, and I think that is not a surprise, however it definitely gives it a different feeling from most of Brian Eno's albums aside from the 30 to an hour long songs. Most of Eno's songs are more quick to go through than this one, in fact I believe this one was made to be a lot more slower to entice the feeling to work and well, think. It takes its time is what can be said, and it's definitely patient sounding as well which I really think adds to the very lovely charm this album has.

However not everything is perfect, obviously. The main problem I have with this album is actually what I love about this album, and that it's thinking and patient music. It does not entice, it isn't grand, it's just a nearly hour long ambient piece of sound. For some that is pretty alright, but for a lot of music fans they cannot really stand this sort of music, or rarely listen to it due it being a lot more ambient and technical than a swinging boogie, and I honestly get what they mean. Not even I would listen to this for hours and hours each and every day because that'd be a waste. It's thinking music, not music music, and I don't think even Brian Eno would want that. It's intended to be music for relaxation and thought, not to jam out to.

After all that though I can safely say that I really like this album. It's very calm and therapeutic in what it tries to achieve, and I believe it achieves these aspects ten fold, however I can definitely see why someone would rather not listen to this because of the fact that it's less of a musical experience and more of a thoughtful one if that makes sense. So while I really like it, I definitely do see why it may be less preferable, especially when starting out with Eno's work.

Brian Eno made a pretty good decision that he should go out on his own, so in 1973, he left Roxy Music in order to have more say in the music he was making. In hindsight, looking at it now, we can all pretty much see the influence he has had in rock and pop music (and continues to have), but also in his solo and soundtrack work. It seems you see his name everywhere now. But, he had to start out on his own somewhere, and the album "Here Come the Warm Jets" was that album.

Most people know that he does very little singing himself, and so this album is a rare occurrence where we get to hear his vocals on every track. But, also to prove that many other musicians agreed with his decision to go out on his own, he was able to recruit a lot of guests to help him out. He had a lot of help from former Roxy Music bandmates along with Robert Fripp (whom he had worked with previously on "(No Pussyfooting)"), Simon King and many others. He also made the smart decision to stick with the glam-pop sound and this made at least 3 of the tracks here sound a lot like the type of music Roxy Music was making at the time.

Needles in the Camel's Eye - Sounds very much like a Roxy Music track from that same period. Most of the songs on this side of the album are written by Eno and Manzanera, plus two other members from Roxy Music help out on many of the tracks. So the wall of noise is somewhat understandable.

The Paw Paw Negro Blowtorch - The only lyrics on the album that really are based upon anything, the other songs are pretty much nonsensical. This one is based upon an urban legend about someone that breathes fire. This continues in the weird sounds of Roxy Music of the time, even with the kooky synths, but it's still quite a catchy song nonetheless, with a lot of Bowie influences.

Baby's on Fire - John Wetton helps out on bass on this one and so is Robert Fripp and Paul Rudolph on guitar. This one has a different atmosphere, but still has that evil sounding playfulness in Eno's vocals. The Fripp/Rudolph solo (which goes on for 3 minutes) in the break is great of course, and contrasts quite well with the "innocent-but-not" attitude of the vocals.

Cindy Tells Me - Manzanera returns one more time for this track. This track has a nice, retro doo-wop feeling to it, again not unlike some of Bowie's early songs. Some metallic effects swoop around over different parts of the track reminding you that this is not a typical pop track, but one with that avant-garde touch to it.

Driving Me Backwards - One thing I didn't mention earlier is that Simon King from Hawkwind is involved in the percussion on about every other track on this album, as he is on this track. This one has more of a later Eno sound to it, even with vocals. It is tense and a bit strung out in the vocals. Both Fripp and Wetton join in on this one too. The melody almost gives you a sense that you are listening to a song backwards.

On Some Faraway Beach - Busta Jones from Talking Heads and bandmate (from Roxy Music) Andy MacKay help out on bass and keyboards respectively on this track. This has a nice, mellow vibe to it and is centered around the piano riff. The vocals on this are multi-tracked wordless harmonics. It builds as it goes with synth layers giving it a nice, symphonic feel. Regular vocals come along far into the track, and has probably some of the most heartfelt lyrics and melody on the album.

Blank Frank - Fripp and Simon King come back on this track. This is the only track that gives Fripp co-writing credits. It has a very direct and hard beat and overall feel. The sarcastic sound is back in Eno's vocals and this matches well with the loudness of Fripp's hammered guitar strumming.

Dead Finks Don't Talk - Busta Jones comes back for this track and yet another Roxy cohort Paul Thompson helps out on percussion. Eno's vocals begin more as a spoken word lyric at first, but when he starts singing, it is much more understated this time, softer and quieter. It has some really kooky vocalizations later on in the track, just to remind you this is not your regular radio type music. According to the credits, Eno plays a snake guitar, whatever that is, but my bet is that it is on this song, as during the instrumental break, there is a guitar that sounds really slithery.

Some of Them Are Old - Eno plays almost everything on this track, except for some keyboards (which are played again by Andy Mackay) and a slide guitar by Lloyd Watson. This one uses multitracked vocals again in both the foreground and background. The harmonies are very nice here, somewhat similar to the harmonies that would show up a lot in the later album "Wrong Way Up" where Eno would collaborate with John Cale. The addition of the slide guitar is a nice surprise to the track.

Here Come the Warm Jets - Both Simon King and Paul Rudolph return on this last track. There is a weird effect here that sounds like a bunch of cellos playing on top of each other, or something like that while rolling percussion plays lightly behind it. It makes for a strange sound that Eno tries to make sound accessible, but I'm not so sure he succeeds. That's okay, because this is Eno after all, and we have come to not expect normal less often that we do expect it.

It's an odd way to end this art-pop of a record, but it still comes across as a nice bit of pop experimental-ism with shades of David Bowie, Roxy Music and King Crimson scattered throughout. How could that be a bad thing? As most everyone knows, Eno very seldom sang except for his first few solo albums, but I think, overall, the world is a better place because of it, as his strength was more in instrumentation and everything that doesn't involve him singing. But it's a pretty good album, not a masterpiece, but still one that would appeal to avant-pop and glam rock lovers. Needless to say, Eno didn't want to stray too far away from his Roxy Music roots in this case. There would be time for that later.

Wow, Eno brothers music that takes you on a measured trip of space and nuance;music for the soul.Roger Eno's piano work is classical and loose enough to be avant jazz .It reminds me of Pierre de Bethmann's repetitive piano with a certain degree of sustain and echo. He also creates space in his playing by leaving silence as emphasis and punctuation; which allows his brother to do his thing as sound "colorist" and tonal mix master. The overall field of this music is all encompassing and very relaxing. Putting on this type of music helps one mentally by providing avenues of adventure and escape. "MIXING COLORS " is a delight that ranks among the better "space" releases that are currently out. Kick back and let it soak in.

This is not the first time I choose to write the first review for a single instead of the source album which already is well reviewed. "Apollo - Atmospheres & Soundtracks" (1983) is one of the most beloved classics of ambient music. Legendary Brian Eno teamed up with his more New Age oriented brother Roger Eno and guitarist/ composer /producer /solo artist Daniel Lanois, who has worked with U2 among others. The album was made for director Al Reinert's documentary about NASA's Apollo missions, which was originally intended to be without any narration. The test audience's response wasn't encouraging, so the film went through a lot of changes and was released in 1989 titled For All Mankind. But the original soundtrack album had a life of its own, truly deservedly.

This promotional single offers a nice sample of that classic album. 'Silver Morning' was composed by Daniel Lanois and it focuses on his electric guitar textures that give some balancing, warm down-to-earth nuances to all the floating spaceyness during the album.

'Deep Blue Day' is one of the finest pieces of the album. A sort of a country-flavoured ambient instrumental with a dreamy and relaxed atmosphere. The soft, bouncy soundscape of spatial synths and mellow guitars is very charming. Hey, was it this piece that was used in the film Trainspotting, in the surreal scene of diving into crystal clear coral sea through a toilet seat? Clever!

Even before Brian Eno's solo career led him to the creation of multiple beloved albums that have become so core to ambient, he showed his experimental approach to music through his quirky art/glam rock material, with this pursuit of unusual and often forward thinking ideas being most clearly captured in his debut, Here Come the Warm Jets. Eno's knack for sound design is also quite apparent upon listening to this, with the fusion of glam rock and a variety of unusual atmospheres and textures making for quite an interesting listen. That said, while definitely quite interesting in a few regards, the album is also one that's quite flawed in a couple of ways that ultimately bring down the experience by quite a bit, notably the fairly unfocused, scattershot nature of the album as a whole, and Eno's vocal delivery.

The album starts off well enough with the fun Needles In the Camel's Eye, with extremely thick distortion on the guitars almost creating a wall of sound at point, complementing the almost wailing vocals of Eno, making for an intense, yet energetic and fun song. The unfortunate aspect of the album starts to rear its head in the next two tracks unfortunately, both for similar reasons, with the quirkier nature of the songs working against them and just becoming somewhat annoying. The Paw Paw Negro Blowtorch has some issues from a vocal standpoint, but my main issue with it is from the seemingly useless synth solo that really just goes nowhere, really just not a particularly great song, though not too bad either. Baby's on Fire on the other hand pushes these problems up to the forefront and seemingly want it to be impossible for the listener to look past these flaws, especially with the absolutely awful, nasally vocals that end up almost sounding like a parody of other glam rock artists. The solo here is really nothing special either, just drags the song out a bit too much, which once again is a shame, since the main instrumental backing here is actually really cool, having a certain feeling of tension to it that never really goes away and creates a marvellous, almost surreal atmosphere. While on the topic of songs being too quirky for their own good and ending up annoying, Blank Frank basically does the same sort of stuff as well but without as much memorable stuff to back it up.

Of course, the peak of obnoxiousness to me comes in on Driving Me Backwards, sounding at times to almost be an extremely unusual, warped version of David Bowie's Time , but without as much charm to it. This song also feels remarkably frustrating in the way that there's so much amazing stuff to be found here once again, especially once the rhythmic hand clapping comes in to only further add to the glorious chaos, as different elements erratically weave in and out, shame that I find Eno's shrill wailing to detract from the song, despite contributing to this uneasy atmosphere. I really feel that this album is at its best when it's focusing on its softer side, with stuff like On Some Faraway Beach and the final 3 songs to be the absolute peak of this album, making far better use of the amazing textures crafted throughout to create some genuinely breathtaking moments. In particular I'm quite a fan of Dead Finks Don't talk and the title track. The former is quite interesting to me as one of the few times that I feel one of the more bizarre ideas on the album works, that being the way Eno constantly interjects during the chorus to scream "Oh no", which honestly goes a long way to make it a pretty memorable song that somehow manages to succeed where a lot of others failed. I also feel that I can't mention this song without bringing up the amazing, dissonant outro that takes things to a far darker place than anything else here, yet another incredibly interesting moment here. The title track marks another one of the best moments here, bringing in yet another song with extremely prominent distortion, this time almost bordering on shoegaze, with layers upon layers of fuzz building and establishing an an almost melancholic tone that lets the album close off in the best possible way it could, having a real sense of finality that almost rivals King Crimson's Starless (almost).

All in all, this is an album that I both think is amazing in certain respects, yet don't particularly think is anything too great when looked at as a whole. For as fascinating and often incredibly enjoyable as the instrumentation and sound design is, the vocals often bring these detailed, experimental compositions down quite harshly. Similarly, for as much as I love how forward thinking in certain respects this album was, I also can't ignore the fact that there are many points where this felt like it came out in the form of mindless, annoying quirkiness over actual great ideas (though there's definitely some of both here). All in all, I find the album to be quite flawed in some key areas that distract form its merits. Even so, I'd still recommend people who like the quirkier side of art rock to check this one out, because there's definitely a lot of interesting stuff here that's worth checking out, even though I'm personally not a fan of how a lot of it ends up being executed.

Best tracks: On Some Faraway Beach, Dead Finks Don't Talk, Here Come the Warm Jets

Weakest tracks: Baby's On Fire, Driving Me Backwards, Blank Frank.