ANOTHER GREEN WORLD

BRIAN ENO left Roxy Music in 1973 after a couple of albums having grown tired of the limitations of rock stardom and had the desire to expand his horizons into more experimental musical ambitions however on his first two solo albums "Here Come The Warm Jets" and "Taking Tiger Mountain (By Strategy)" he still latched onto the glam rock sounds that made Roxy Music such a legend although ENO certainly reimagined them to his liking and in the process crafted two classic art pop albums that were highly influential. Indeed those albums sounded like nothing else the 70s had to offer and when it came to ENO's third solo release ANOTHER GREEN WORLD he was starting to shed the glam rock sounds of his early professional career and was heading more in the direction of where his collaboration with Robert Fripp on "Pussyfooting" was heading.

ANOTHER GREEN WORLD was released in September 1975 and basically served as a juncture where his previous glam rock leanings coexisted side by side with the ambient and electronic sounds that would emerge on the next album "Discreet Music" that would follow a few months later in December. The results gave ANOTHER GREEN WORLD a distinct unique hybridization effect unheard on any other ENO album and one that has gained a loyal cult following ever since for its innovative approach of incorporating aspects of progressive electronic sounds woven into catchy art pop compositions. Like the albums before, ENO solicited the help of a few friends. Robert Fripp joined in for three tracks, the most adventurous being the fiery guitar solos with his wimshurst guitar on "St. Elmo's Fire." Likewise Phil Collins from Genesis contributed to a few tracks as well as the Velvet Underground's John Cale. Several others were included as well.
 Added to that ENO employed his outsider views of how to craft new innovative sounds such as electric guitars played with mallets which were electronically modified to sound like castanets as well as crafting something called the Leslie piano which fed acoustic piano sounds through a Leslie speaker. Other innovations on the guitar meant that ANOTHER GREEN WORLD showcased some very unorthodox guitar sounds unlike anything else ever recorded. This album wasn't successful in the commercial world but impressed the insiders of the music world and has since then gone down as a classic of innovative art rock from the mid-70s. ENO was also busy after his Roxy Music days with numerous collaborations which included his most famous example with Robert Fripp in the form of "No Pussyfooting" as well as other with Kevin Ayers, Nico, Lady June and Phil Manzanera.

The year 1975 was a tough one for ENO when in January he was hit by a taxi and forced to spend some downtime at home but in the process discovered that a broken channel of his stereo led to new inspirations of how to manipulate sound dynamics. This led to his interest in ambient sounds which led to "Discreet Music" but also altered his perceptions on how to record ANOTHER GREEN WORLD. For the most part, ANOTHER GREEN WORLD consists of two distinct types of tracks. One style is the pure chilled out ambient tracks that directly points to his future releases and the others are sort of leftover from his art pop albums that preceded except that the vocals that are pretty much in the same style as "Tiger" and "Jets" are crafted over more electronic musical accompaniments rather than glam rock, however they still have enough rock elements to be classified as such. While many cite this as one of ENO's zenith performances, i don't quite find it to be so perfect. Due to the inconsistencies of random snippets of electronica appearing between the art pop tracks, the album has sort of a disjointed feel to it unlike the albums that came before and would soon emerge after. Not that any of the tracks are bad in any way but some of the electronic only performances are rather forgettable.

At this point ENO was a huge underground superstar behind the scenes in the music industry even if he wasn't exactly a household name. His unorthodox creativity made him quite sought after in the studio as a producer and beyond. He would continue to create highly innovative ambient albums alone and then with artists like Cluster, David Bowie and Phil Manzanera's 801. While i much prefer the glam rock albums that came before or the pure ambient ones soon to be released, there's no denying that ANOTHER GREEN WORLD is an excellent innovative slice of ambient pop with some of the most clever means of production. ENO was a master of crafting catchy tunes with a receptive bass line but exploring bizarre avant-garde arenas with the changing structures that layered over the simple rhythmic grooves. The most widely used word for his style of music that encompassed his first three albums is simply "quirky," and i can't think of a better description than that to sum it all up succinctly.

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