Graham Reid | | 2 min read
Suddenly
It never takes much for Elsewhere to be interested in an album with Brian Eno's name attached.
Over the years we have essayed his innovative work in that decade after he left Roxy Music. And right up to his more recent albums.
In the Seventies however he released a series of studio-crafted, influential left-field albums redefining the possibilities of pop. Even at this early stage he was being cited as a taste-maker and cultural touchstone, even before he started producing for the likes of Devo, Talking Heads, David Bowie and others.
And parallel to his first four solo albums in the Seventies he also started his own Obscure label and explored ambient atmospherics he defined as music “as ignorable as it is enjoyable”.
Ironically, inspiring as albums like Here Come the Warm Jets, Taking Tiger Mountain By Strategy (both 1974) and Another Green World (1975) were, few followed him down those paths, many more made ambient music.
Perhaps because it was easier than trying to match the inspirational Before and After Science (1977).
Eno has always been an active collaborator and prime mover (Robert Fripp, John Cale, David Byrne), producer (Bowie, Talking Heads, U2, Coldplay) and an intellectually curious boffin drawn to future technologies.
So it's no surprise to find him, on two separate albums, with British conceptual artist and techno-innovator Beatie Wolfe, his pioneering equal in new technology and curiosity who recently worked with ambient musician Laraaji whose 1980 Days of Radiance Eno produced.
Lateral – credited to Eno first then Wolfe – is an hour-long, drifting eight-part composition Big Empty Country underpinned by a subtle drone.
It sits comfortably alongside Eno's foundational ambient albums Music for Airports (1978) and On Land (1982) with hints of his more melodic masterpiece, Apollo (1983).
An enjoyable/ignorable path much travelled by Eno and his disciples.
However Luminal – credited to Wolfe first – is of more interest, despite titles like Milky Sleep, Hopelessly Ease and Shhh which suggest sleepwalking atmospherics.
With her hypnotic voice, Eno's synth backdrops, a production wrapping her voice around the room and sonically cohesive songs, Luminal is shimmering, weightless pop.
There's the seductive Play On, the mesmerising And Live Again and What We Are is “somewhere on the intersection of cowboy psychedelia and electrofolk,” says Wolfe.
Luminal is like a belated, feminine successor to Before and After Science. But enchantingly different and very much itself.
Of the two names here we came for Eno but stayed for Wolfe.
We'll do that when her name appears in the future.
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You can hear both of these albums at Spotify here
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