special introductory paragraph
No Pussyfooting (with Robert Fripp) Here Come The Warm Jets Taking Tiger Mountain (By Strategy) Another Green World
Discreet Music Evening Star (with Robert Fripp) Before And After Science
Ambient 1: Music For Airports Music For Films In a Land of Clear Colours (with Peter Sinfield) Ambient 2: Plateaux Of Mirror (with Harold Budd) Fourth World, Vol. 1: Possible Musics (with John Hassell)Ambient 3: Day Of Radiance (with Laraaji) My Life In The Bush Of Ghosts (with David Byrne) Ambient 4: On Land Apollo: Atmospheres & Soundtracks (with Daniel Lanois & Roger Eno) The Pearl (with Harold Budd) Thursday Afternoon Wrong Way Up (with John Cale)Nerve NetThe Shutov Assembly Neroli Headcandy Spinner (with Jah Wobble) A Year (with Swollen Appendices) EPExtracts From Music For White Cube The Drop Lightness: Music For The Marble Palace-The State Russian Museum, St. PetersburgI Dormienti Kite Stories Music for Civic Recovery Centre Compact Forest Proposal: 5 Studies for "010101", San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, 2001 Drawn From Life (with J. Peter Schwalm) January 07003: Bell Studies For The Clock Of The Long Now The Equatorial Stars (with Robert Fripp) More Music For Films Another Day On Earth Everything That Happens Will Happen Today (with David Byrne) Small Craft On A Milk Sea Drums Between The Bells (with Rick Holland) Making Space Panic of Looking EP (with Rick Holland)
Brian Erno began his career in Roxy Music, then became a flapjackingly good solo pop/rock songwriter with a particular interest in and talent for drenching wonderful British catchy-tunes in golden showers of disorienting electronic noise. Going by both his given name "Brian Eno" and the meaningless nonsense term "ENO" (short for "Electric Night Orchestra"), Brian was poised to take the world of radio by rainstorm when he unfortunately invented "ambient music," lost all interest in songwriting, and began selling discs of wispy pink air.
This album has two songs by Roxy Music's Brian Eno and King Crimson's Robert Fripp. The first is a haunting 21-minute pile of moody drones that Fripp ruins by soloing over it. The second is 18 1/2 minutes of squiggly celestial UFO noises going up and down combined with interplayriffic guitar harmonics and clean motifs, marred only by Fripp soloing over the last half. Apparently these songs were created by playing guitars and synths into a delay pedal and then adding more and more on top as the original motifs get quieter and fade away. Having done the exact same thing with my friend Matthew Terrebonne when we were in our mid-teens and had never even heard of Brian Eno, let me assure you that it is turd-simple to create beautiful, mesmerizing collages of noise, drone and melody through this method. Especially if you don't SOLO over it for ten assfucking minutes. No Pussyfooting? Yeah, more like No PussyFUCKING! (because you're assfucking) (I guess I already said that)
I could certainly do without this record, and heartily recommend that you do the same unless you're the sort to hang on Robert Fripp's every outrageous dissonant 'bwee'.
Ha ha! You caught me! Yes, "outrageous dissonant 'bwee'" was of course just a hilarious pun on 'courageous dissident Kyi," the true leader of Burma. A close "Shave" indeed!
After listening to that one side, my head is swimming in extasy. Some would say that you need drugs to enjoy this music. I say the music IS drugs!
IF YOU GREW UP IN A WHOREHOUSE! Eno at the outset of his career was a glam man who wore big gold makeup and robotic elevator shoes to the office every day, and his debut solo release certainly reflects this fashion obsession. However, behind all the fuzzed-out Sweet-style rhythm guitars, huge cock-rock guitar solos and campy light-in-the-nipples fluffernuttery, he was playing a magnificent assortment of Beatles-inspired pop music (the Lennon-out-the-ASS bitter piano attack "Driving Me Backwards" and exact Rutles replica "Some Of Them Are Old"), modern drone-tone pop rockers that any Flying Nun band would kill or die for (the title track driven by Eno's self-described 'warm jet guitar,' the hypnotic buzzery chime and celebratory vocal melody of "Needles In The Camel's Eyes"), and interesting takes on the music of his youth (the deconstructed Bo Diddley/carnival music hybrid "Blank Frank," the generic doowop ballad with ear-blasting jet engine guitar solo "Cindy Tells Me"). His songwriting itself was thus fairly traditional (though quite accomplished in the melody department!); it was the oddball production and loopy playing that planted this baby deep into the underground.
Ahhh, I'll never forget the first time I planted a baby deep into the underground. You see, I was tending the garden when I mistook the neighbors' kid for a pumpkin seed. Next thing you know, I'm a MURDERER! And I'm MURDERING EVERYBODY IN TOWN!!!! ALL OVER THE PLACE!!! MURDER MURDER MURDER!!!! THEY'RE ALL DEAD NOW - THE WHOLE TOWN!!! So I started a record review site.
So you see, Brian Eno's first solo album is a goddarned really good pop-rock album full of repetitive melodies that he has buried in warm, humming, natural guitar and organ tones along with the occasional weird electronic blurble. It's by far his most NORMAL album, but it's good, man! I mean it! If you like late-60s Kinks or any of that '90s New Zealand crap, or even if you're just really into emo music and think that a man with such a like-sounding surname must be good by association, I hereby advise you to purchase this latest early debut first album by Robert Fripp's good buddy Brian, the finest of the Enos. And by "Enos," I of course mean that funny deputy from The Dukes Of Hazzard. Remember that time the Duke boys ran him ragged until he drove his car into the lake and got his hat all wet? Ha ha! Oh, those Duke boys! And remember the time their cousin David joined the KKK and ran for public office? God bless those Duke boys of Hazzard County! I must see if they're on the TV right now. (*turns on TV, finds The Dukes of Hazzard*) Hey wait a minute - who's this Luke prick? WHERE THE SHIT ARE FUCKIN' COY AND GODDAMNED VANCE!??!?!?!? (*literally shits brick*) OWWWWWWW!!!!!!!
Here Comes the Warm Jets is surely one of the most innovative and best solo debuts of the 70's.
Ok, ok, I don't know if I have the right to judge whether all these people's work is crappy........ but if I did, then I'd say it's the crappiest crap that I have ever had the witness watch someone crap.
Then I realize, ok, there are a few country guys that I have heard of that I don't bloody hate.
Like Dolly Parton, who is excellent when she decides to write her own material... and she's comming out of her LONG bad stage! I think, I don't know much about her.
Lucinda Williams is supposed to be good. Shania Twain is possibly the only REALLY sucessful contemporary pop acts I'll ever endorse. She has put forth her fair share of questionable stuff though.
Then there's this album, Come Place the Hot Bets!!! HA HA!! I pulled a Mark Prindle on par with Hymen and Buttfunkle! Ok, not quite on par with that. Hmmm, look at this, it's 3:49 A.M..... I have school tomorrow. Oh well. Ok, Here Come The Warm Jets is very interesting, and is a fine solo debut album, one of the finest. Eno was dissmissed in his day as being a frivilous Bowie-type character (from what I hear). I can understand the comparison, but, even despite Bowie's now solidified, if somewhat questionable, status as IMMORTAL, Brian Eno is the greater talent. Here Come The Warm Jets is effortlessly as good as the best of Bowie's material. It's not great, though. It's quite entertaining.... but it gets old quickly. There's quite a bit going on musically... or a-musically, but there's not nearly enough going on lyrically. As a collection of catchy-as-hell and odd pop songs, Here Come The Warm Jets excels. As a TRULY great album, it falls short. But I'm probably missing the point. So, I guess the essence (or whatever word you wannna use) is completely lost on me. The album DOES display the genius of Brian Eno, though, possibly one of the most underrated (at least by the press) rock-guys ever. I'd, like Mark Prindle, give this one a solid 8.
But like many albums, Here Come The Warm Jets has a recommendabilty that is far beyond the rating that it is usually given. Kinda like Harvest.
So I was delighted when slowly but confidently Kate Bush’s The Dreaming and this very record started slipping in there; both original, inventive, adventurous, reasonably weird.
Sonically, Here Come The Warm Jets is two thirds glam-rock, one third ambient (never ever boring!) and is of course impeccable. The atmosphere, the arrangements (guitar-heavy) are breathtaking, presenting a wonderful foil for Brian’s detached, emotionally warm vocals. Manzanera’s guitar is glammy and infectious (“Baby’s On Fire”), but it’s particularly inspiring when Eno goes off with keyboards (“Driving Me Backwards”) and weird orchestration (“Dead Finks Don’t Talk”, with fantastic mock-Ferry vocals).
Lyrically, it’s odd and hilarious. Check out “Cindy Tells Me”, for instance, which is Brian’s impossibly catchy and bizarre take on feminism.
Melodically, it’s brilliant. Every single melody on the album is unforgettable, even if “Black Frank” is just a bombastic, glammy take on Bo Diddley’s beat. “Driving Me Backwards” may be a tad simplistic, but vocal-wise and atmosphere-wise it’s still among the best songs ever written. I can’t help singing along to that nonsense. Other quieter numbers are also wonderful, like the soft, moody, half-instrumental “On Some Faraway Beach” (wouldn’t be out of place on the second side of Before And After Science) and especially the gorgeous, pensive “Some Of Them Are Old”.
For me, it’s Eno’s strongest, richest, most diverse record (but all those four sung albums of Brian’s are classics). It’s his GodWeenSatan, only much, much more coherent. Needless to say, a ten.
Also, it's not by a band called Strategy; that's actually part of the album title. The album itself is of course by top-selling '70s act EG 1974. You see, when Denny Laine was caught with his tongue up Lind There are many who say that a "writer" shouldn't "write" if he has no interest at goddamned all in "writing" at a particular moment. But these are people who don't understand the nature of entropy. If one stops writing -- even for ONE SECOND -- that person will get caught up in an endless lazy cycle of not creating anything ever. As such, that person (Brian Eno) must -- I mean MUST -- write one record review every day, regardless of mood, food stamps or congregation. Luckily, when reviewing the work of such a talented young man as Brian Eno, this man (Brian Eno) need not worry about navigating the urine-stained keys -- the words appear on the screen independent of manual ac This album is darker and full of much more electronic instrumental interplay than the debut, but its focus remains chiefly on pop rock music. Mr. Elbo is becoming even more adept at slowly adding in multiple sonic elements as his songs progress; the bare tunes themselves are still pretty repetitive, but he adds so many tones, noises and additional instruments to the mix, they still wind up overwhelmingly engaging. As a bit of description, the drum tones are as crisp as a crunchy pile of Autumn leaves, the guitar is generally either as skrankly as barbed wire or as fuzzed-out and mesmerizing as a Snakefinger solo, and the organ/piano melodies are a dreamboat for the ears. My only minor complaint is that the vocals too often subscribe to that annoying David Bowie double-tracked identical performance method. The one that the Ramones used on their album Ramones before they all died within three weeks of each other.
But more so than all this -- there's just so much STUFF going on in every song! Depending on which part of the CD you rest your turntable needle upon, you're wont to hear percussion that sounds like knives being sharpened ("The Great Pretender"), an ugly treated out-of-tune pile of shit that's either a violin, a horn, a guitar or any combination of the above ("Put A Straw Under Baby"), a bass guitar that completely switches key during the last minute and a half of the song, magically transforming the song into an amelodic mess of cacophony ("Third Uncle"), a rhythm break performed on a typewriter ("China My China") and even a lovely display of one of my all-time favorite melodic tricks -- that of playing a rotating, repeating three-chord riff over a 4/4 beat ("The True Wheel"). With this kind of zaniness, who needs clowns?
Please don't take that comment seriously. We all need clowns.
Taking Tigger's Mountain (By Brian Eno) is the perfect Eno pop album before he began experimenting with his less-than-exciting furniture music. Buy it tomorrow and we'll all agree together that it is a cerebral, eclectic and agelessly hummable collection of beautiful Kinksy nostalgia, pre-punk aggression and scratchy experimental rock. It's also less cutesy and fey than the original -- always a plus if you're not really into music at all but just play it to get laid like I do. I own more than 15,000 albums and CDs, and each one is specifically designed to get me in the pants of a slightly different type of broad. I couldn't even tell you what most of them sound like -- I just label 'em by body shape, hair color, occupation, age, stupidity level, etc. Fuckin' broads are so easy to ball, the slutty hair-holes. Here, I'll demonstrate with Elton John's The One.
See that??? Within minutes, I'm thowin’ it at a 75-year-old man!!!
Side Note: the "ugly treated out-of-tune pile of sh*t that's either a violin, a horn, a guitar or any combination of the above" you mention is actually the Portsmouth Sinfonia: a group of unskilled string players, which I believe that Eno was once a part of (possibly before Roxy Music)
Rip Torn, that is! Hi everyone! You know, back in my heyday as I starred in such mass market successes as Freddy Got Fingered, nobody could have imagined that I suffered from incontinence. That's because I used "My Own Hand"! That's right -- I would simply urinate into my own hand every five minutes and wipe it on a co-star. You see, t I'm torn because every piece of information I could give you about Brian Eno's career proper can be found just as easily by you on the Internet, which is where I would find it. So what's the point in that? I never claimed to be a one-stop Brian Eno shop of material stolen from other sources! I'm just the Review Man, reviewing every album in the palm of my hand! But see, to understand where Eno is coming from with his "ambient" shit, it's probably pretty important to mention that he came up with the concept while recuperating from an accident -- when he couldn't reach his radio to turn the music up louder than the elemental noise outside. This was when it hit him that music could serve as just another, non-intrusive part of a person's environment. Sure, folks like you and me would have experimented with this idea for one album and gotten back to real music, but not old Ryan Beano! He took to it like a fish to marillion and is still riding the same tired white horse (cocaine) even today. But let's not get ahead of ourselves; I'm reviewing an album from 1975 here. To discuss any post-’75 event in this forum would be like a dictionary using a word that starts with a "d" in the definition of a word that starts with "a"! Can you imagine? Nobody would understand what the hell they were talking about! This is because, at birth, people read and memorize the dictionary from beginning to end.
Brian Eno's first exploration into the ambience of gentle synthesizer wisps and fake strings actually turned out quite wonderful, mainly because he stuck to song structure. Only five of these 14 songs have vocals, but the nine instrumentals are NOT (as would later be the case) just triplets of electric piano notes echoing over themselves for 30 minutes at a clip. They're songs. Monotonous, half-written sketches of songs, but easily recognizable and lovely melodies nonetheless. The first couple tunes present a brand new Eno - FUNKMaster Eno! With a funkyass bassmaster and some funky krautrock groove drum action and weird noises all floatin' in and out and muthafuckin' shit, but then NO MORE! After that, it's all warm sunny fantasy-tones and heartbreaking melancholy psychedelia (and four jolly vocal pop songs). Actually, most of the instrumentals are reminiscent of Pink Floyd's early soundtrack material, only much more evocative for the most part. The chosen tones are simple perfection: dark Autumn shadows and anxiety-riddled opium slumbers haunt every second of pulsating guitar/organ tracks like "Spirits Drifting," "In Dark Trees," and "Sombre Reptiles," while the optimistic glee of droning ecstasy wafts like a raft through the gentle tides of "The Big Ship" and the title track. Comparatively, the five full-band pop songs seem completely out of place, leaving the unsuspecting listener wondering, "Why's the happy British man with the piano ruining my heroin 'trip'?” They're gorgeous compositions nonetheless; it's just strange to hear a few traditional ditties wedged haphazardly between so many explorations of pure music-as-emotion. Still, what kind of monster could complain about a song based upon the repeated-five-billion-times refrain, "I'll come running to tie your shoe"?
Wait! I know what kind of monster! SOME Kind Of Monster! "Dude, I was like joggin' this morning and thinking about comin' in here and seein' you and the only word I could think of was 'FUCK!'" "FUCK!" .. . FUUUUCK! FUCK!!" ... . . ."FUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUCK!" . . See, the crazy thing is that I could have SWORN Lars Ulrich was a brain surgeon by the way he sued all his fans that time. Who'da guessed he's actually a big dumb asshole?
I only listened to this album once. I don't remember much about it, except
that I fell asleep before track seven, and I really really liked it while I
was awake. Good contrast from all the booty-rap playing outside my window.
Barring further listens, a nine.
But, then, gradually, the unnerving sensation that I wanted to listen to it again came over me, and I put it in the CD player again and again and again, usually as background music while doing exercise or washing dishes or whatnot and gradually it hit me that just about everything on this album is excellent, even the little quickie numbers. One thing that needs to be noted is that not ONCE does Eno hit quite the same mood or sound on the fourteen different tracks. Another thing is that the "hooks" seem really simple ("Everything Merges With The Night"--it's that little treated guitar part between the verses!). Third, all the song titles turn out to be really accurate as to each track's sound. But yes, gradually it overwhelms you just how memorable everyone of these miniature "sound paintings" hits, and it really does feel like the album equivalent of browsing an art gallery. Only "Becalmed" and the title track hit me at first, but eventually....and no, I never had to "try harder" to get it. I just compulsively wanted to listen to the album that much.
And God that crystal-clear production. What album from 1975, regardless of remastering, sounded clearer and brighter in addition to sounding so ahead of its time? My initial guess as to the album's date would have been maybe 1981 or so. It really doesn't sound very dated at all, though. Only the puny drum machines give away the 1975 date, and those aren't used in a way that detracts from the album either.
No 70s collection could possibly be complete without this one. I haven't heard "Before Or After Science" yet but otherwise this is a clear front runner for Eno's best.
Fuckin' A.
But my main problem with the CD is the next three songs. All three are "extrapolations" on the theme of Pachelbel's Canon In D -- a lovely song, no? Yes? Yes! Perhaps you played it at your wedding. We all love it, and so does everybody else. However, in Eno's hirsute, apelike hands, a lovely string section is allowed to perform that timeless melody exactly ONE TIME before Brian fucks around with everything so that the final 20 minutes of the album constantly HINT AT that lovely, enchanting melody without EVER, EVER, EVER actually playing it again. How on Fuck's Earth is that supposed to be calming? I could actually picture Eno cackling an evil laugh and making the strings play a bunch of bullshit modern classical tuneless crap as I sat there like a schlemiel, waiting on pins and needles for Pachelbel's lovely motif to return. And sure, part of my stress may have been a result of sitting down like a schlemiel in the middle of my ass acupuncture appointment, but if Eno were any good at this ambient tooty fruity, wouldn't he have helped me forget? Wouldn't he have helped me drink to forget?
Look, we all know how I feel about Hurricane Charley, so don't get me started on Flying Sack Of Shit Indiscreet Music.
<3
On Evening Star, Robert Fripp plays guitars. Hundreds and thousands
of guitars. I'm rounding up, but he plays guitars. Brian Eno then plugs
these guitars through a tape loop thingy to create tape loops over which
Robert Fripp plays additional guitars. The result is Guitars! Guitars!
Guitars! Also, mellowness.
The first track sounds like My Bloody Valentine if they didn't write songs
and only knew one chord. But as the side progresses, modal beds of serene
guitar drones are topped with small peaceful melodies and tuneful solos.
Occasionally a piano pops in. This is all wonderful and heartwarming, and
nuclear war is averted through love.
Side two darkens the mood and expands the concept to a near half-hour epic
of rise, climax and decay. Guitars take place, hypnotically. In no rush
to get to a chorus, Fripp piles on more and more tiny riffs, allowing each
one to slowly fade away over time. This is "An Index of Metals," and
should be treated as such.
I can't keep my eyes open.
Here are some great guitar jokes you might have read about in the
Almanac:
What's the difference between an acoustic guitar and Britney Spears?
How many guitars does it take to screw in a light bulb?
Why did the guitar cross the road?
Where's the guitar?
I don't know. Sddddddddgj.
Knock knock
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Foist of all (as a man with an accent might say), the Eenman has discovered the bubbly tribal rhythms of world music that he would later inject into the Talking Heads' work, but hasn't found a way to combine it with his pop songwriting strengths, resulting in the embarrassing ultra-white faux-funk opener "No One Receiving" and goofy children's song "Kurt's Rejoinder." SeXXXondly (as a man addicted to pornography might say), his voice has deepened to the point where he sounds like an oafish British cartoon character, unable to bring the proper warmth and gentleness to the could-have-been-a-nice-beachy-number "Here He Comes." Turdly (as a coprophile might say), Eno's awkward attempt to pay tribute to goodtime straight-up rock and roll ("King's Lead Hat") is even more awkward and boneheaded than Yes's classic "Rejoice, Rejoice." And fourthly (as a salesman in a dildo store might say), the mega-ugly sci-fi atrocity "Energy Fools The Musician" should NEVER have been on the Rock And Roll High School soundtrack and would be better ripped off the vinyl and left thousands of miles out at sea along with its pussy-ass Todd Rundgren buddy "A Dream Lives On Forever." But that was all too specific, which is no help to the bleeding consumer eager for a musical tourniquet (or Vitamin K). More generally, side one presents Eno doing what he does WORST. He is NOT a goodtime rock and roller, nor the headsmith of an African tribal dance ritual, nor a funky James Brown black entertainer, nor even a Buck Rogers-style laserbeam space guy: in fact, he is none of these things and more. And that's the real problem with side one -- only one track, the wonderfully infectious "Backwater," shows us the talented songsmith Eno we used to know. The "Before Science" Eno, I guess. This lousy "After Science" Eno can suck an egg. Which brings us to side B -- the good side. Good? Hell, GOOD good! In my fact, these four tracks could very well be the most emotionally powerful and gently gorgeous compositions in the Eno catalog! Built upon the soft tones of the electric piano, waves of lush keyboards, pianos and/or strings/horns of some sort (unless that's ANOTHER keyboard. Who can tell in today's busy world of synthesized noise?), this entire side of slow-paced music conjures up a mood of early-morning blues and greys -- love and fear, bliss and anxiety -- the feeling of facing another day in an unfeeling world where you can only work for the good and try to avoid the bad. The passing away of the hippy fantasy. Freedom from society, but not from loneliness or pain. And sure, the lyrics are probably just more meaningless Eno wordplay crap, but the music perfectly captures the confusing disillusion that haunted so many young minds as the magic mushroom '60s hardened into the heroin '70s. Why Eno was unable to capture that mood until 1977, I don't know. Maybe he goes by dog years?
Also, I think that this record may have influenced even Joy Division! Please don't tell me that the first two songs here don't sound like the first two on Closer! Is it a coincidence? I don't think so.
"By This River" in my opinion is the best Eno vocal performance. The
harmonies at the end are inspired, and Cluster (listed on the album
under their names) are a welcome collaboration on this record (how much
more Phil Collins can one take? That's where all that "tribal" drumming
came from!). I only wish that the song went on longer.
Is this also a concept record?
And you were right about side B. Good shit.
Plus, the whole thing, while unique, doesn't sound exactly ahead of its time,
so it's still got that warm cozy '70's vibe to it. I give it a ten. Or at
least a nine and a half.
By the way, did you notice how all the pundits are calling the VP debate
a "draw?" I'm pro-Edwards, but I think he got his ass kicked.
"Here He Comes" I feel should've been on Side One, it being at a faster tempo than the rest of side two. Great guitar and bass.
"Julie With..." is contender for my fav. song on the album....beautiful yet eerie.
"By this River" is also one of my fav. songs on the album. Great vocals, wonderful harmonies at the end.
"Through Hollow Lands" isn't as good as the rest, but still not bad.
"Spider and I" is a great closer to a great album. Nice warm synth tones, optimistic lyrics.
IMHO a wonderful album.
Pardon me, for I have exaggerated. Brian Eno's Music For Airports has four tracks, and two of them are perfect for the airport environment. Track one, for one of two possible examples, is a divine, tranquil series of 4 or 5 piano notes repeated over a soothing electronic wash soundscape. Whether awaiting a flight from Peru or taking a dump in your shoe, you would find your airfield stress greatly reduced by the warm, cozy tones exuded in the hilariously titled "1/1." A similar thumbs up can be physically applied to the rectal column of track four, satirically entitled "2/2." This synthesizer ambience rings of hope and a new tomorrow -- exactly what most of us are seeking as we prepare to fly a silver bird into the sky where wings take dream. So for these two heartwarming espressos of sound alone, Eno has earned his pilot’s license regarding understanding bo diddley about the common man. I truly made an unconscionable error in suggesting that he is somehow out of touch with the nature of man and his airport needs, and for this I dearly, belatedly, posthumously apologize.
However, on "1/2" and "2/1," Eno makes it clear that he doesn't understand bo diddley about the common man, and might as well just throw his organ out the window. And I think you KNOW what I mean by "organ"!!!!!!! (Wurlitzer made out of kidneys) These two icy, somber electronic works suck all the life and fun out of the airport, replacing it with depressing rainstorms, miserable freezing air conditioner, the departure of a loved one and an overriding hopelessness so powerful that the only escape is to set off a grenade during your flight. You wanna know why 9/11 happened, check out what the Iraqi terrorists from Iraq who were born in Iraq and represented the country of Iraq were listening to on their Walkmans that day. Prepare yourself mentally for what I am about to reveal, for it may very well tear your little world apart. The police missed this key piece of evidence, but I found it while ransacking the area for gold doubloons. Here then is the REAL truth behind the most catastrophic attack on U.S. soil since the revolutionary war: the Iraqi terrorists were listening to BRIAN ENO'S MUSIC FOR A - hey, do you have any idea what this bump is on my testicle? It's been there for a couple of weeks now. I squeezed some blood out of it a couple of times, but it's still there. I don't think it's cancer because it's on the outside of the scrotum. But anyway, the terrorists were listening to TAPES OF MUSLIM BULLSHIT.
Two hopeful dreamy ethereal rainbows of airport relaxation, and two misguided dark clouds of overcast sky: that's what Brian Eno thinks of America, so stick THAT in your tie and tie it!
While it's tough to choose just a single favorite
track on Ambien: Music for Long Air Flights, if I
did it would be "2/2" ... something about it reminds
me of this album of (no, honestly!) trancey music
performed on synths and ... tuba. Really! It's from
this cool label, Innova, that puts out all kinds of
weirdness. Look into Bowed Metal Music by Peter
Warren,
fer a fer-instance.
It's creepy, although not quite as creepy as The
Soothing Sounds of Eno.
Put it all together and the facts are clear - these songs were never intended to be in any REAL films at all! Brian just recorded them on a whim one day between the years of 1975 and 1978 and then set about trying to sneak them into motion pictures he showed at his own home. For example, let me give you an example.
These 18 tracks DO sound like incidental music from films. The first half of the CD is even chock a block full of actual melodies, of all insane creations! Lots of short haunting pieces of cinematic new age music created by fancy expensive synthesizers and plain jane cheapass pianos. The shorter lengths of the tracks allow you to actually LISTEN if you want to (as opposed to Airports From Death, which you have to treat as background music else your ears slide off your head from boredom). Evocative soft tones of restfulness, Radioheady eerie scares, echoes, the Zombies' "Time Of The Season," dramatic, lingering, wistful, satisfying, some of it even sounds like music The Cure would use on their depressing goth albums! Shittily, the album takes a nose wash halfway through, converting into lazy, empty, unappealing dogdix that would never make the cut of a major motion picture studio. For example, "Strange Light." Or those others. Emotionless, drab crap. A man needs expressive music in his film. Perhaps the last half of this album was intended for a Spiro Agnew documentary? The funky cocaine beats, echoey martial drums, science fiction nerdiness, African tribal pop, violin scrapes, Residentsy nothingness - I'm talking about the second half, Jack - and that ain't no flack, Mac. Gimme some slack, hack a hacky-sack, don't get wack, eat a Big Mac, Drac, lick my sac, wac, flackity-pack, Jack, Rack a kack of nack, Pack. Flack a shack in a track of gack. SMELL MY GACK! SMELL MY GODDAMNED GACK!
It's all instrumental. Not a single word to speak of. As the Monkees once sang so harmoniously, "Words that never were true/Just spoken to help nobody but you/Words with lies inside/But small enough to hide til your playing was through." On the very self-same Dolenz/Nesmith/Tork/Jones album, you could also find the psychedelic moog-driven '60s anthem that is still quoted by international statesmen today, "Daily Nightly." Has mortal man ever penned a more potent description of inner discovery than the eye-gouging couplet "Dark and rolling figures move through prisms of no color/Hand in hand they walk the night but never know each other"? If such is the case, nobody ever shared this magical "other song" with mine truly, Yours.
The first half of this Brian Eno album (for that is what we are discussing here) is so special that its very specialty is a synonym for "beautiful" that I should look up someday so I can stop using the same words over and over. You know what I love about George W. Bush? The way he lies about everything. Even when he has a good idea (i.e. establish a U.S.-friendly presence in the middle east so we can keep an eye on all the radical Muslims and make sure they don't FUCK us again), he lies about it. He's too full of shit for a human being to be.
Also, his pants.
Eno. Dark pitches, sonic beeping, foreboding like a dark submarine thriller. This is music that sounds like it's from a movie, just like that Fantomas album. You know the one I mean! We ALL know the one I mean! That one with the whatever!
Bad Taste
AND THAT'S ALL.
British Isles resident Peter Sinfield narrates his story, which involves a man living on a planet with some geeky loser name and hanging out with his girlfriend "Linnea" and friends "Wolfing" and "Durnish." They all live together and have communal sex, in a chapter Sinfield typed with one hand. Then they hold a ceremony and take hallucinogenic drugs and eventually everybody dies and turns into animals, which later die and turn into plants (MASSIVE SPOILER). Upon its release in 1979, Voiceprint held a contest inviting fans to guess how many jars Sinfield filled with ejaculate while writing the story. The winner received a drawing of a naked bunny rabbit woman.
Eno fans, stay away. Even *you* will hate this one. I only gave it a 3 due to (a) some Monty Python-esque dry humor at the beginning, and (b) the sheer unexpectedness of the surprise ending I just ruined for you. Also, at the end of The Sixth Sense, it turns out the kid was just lying the whole time.
END OF REVIEW
BEGINNING OF SAD PART
My beloved son Henry The Dog was diagnosed with cancer yesterday. He has an enormous tumor in his chest cavity, and most likely does not have long to live. I am not going to put him through the torture of chemotherapy or surgery at his advanced age (he's almost 11, which is pretty old for an 85-pound dog), so all I can do is try to keep him spoiled and happy until the cancer starts to hurt. When he lets me know he's in too much pain to go on, I'll take him to the vet and end his suffering. I love him.
I will never forget that day in November 2000 when my then-fiancee called me at my then-job and asked if we could get a puppy. Our plan had been to wait until we were married so that our puppy wouldn't be born a bastard and a son of a bitch, but she sounded so excited that I couldn't say no. I picked out a week in December to take off work for Puppy Duty, and we scheduled a Doggy Hunting Date for Saturday, December 9th.
Neither of us could get to sleep on the evening of December 8th because we were so excited about bringing a little puppy into our lives. When morning arrived, we walked up to the Upper East Side Center for Animal Care & Control (CACC), where we found nothing but pit bulls and older dogs. Nothing against either, but I wanted to raise a dog from puppyhood, and didn't feel comfortable starting out with a pit bull. As such, we took an hour-long train ride out to the CACC in Brooklyn. They had plenty of puppies! After playing with several, we picked one that we were pretty sure about. However, I decided to take one more quick look into all the cages just to make sure we hadn't missed any. It was then that I noticed, snug asleep in the back of a cage, the future Mr. Henry The Dog.
"Wow, that is a sharp-looking dog!" I exclaimed as I opened the door and pulled him out. He slowly awoke and looked at us with half interest. Brenda agreed that he was quite the cutie. Here's a photo, for proof of this claim:
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My fiancee had brought along a "Puppy Aptitude Test" to make sure our chosen pet wasn't deaf, retarded or a dumbass. Henry failed every question, but he was so darned cute we adopted him anyway. Then we brought him home and he had diarrhea under the Christmas Tree; oh the good times.
When my wife left me in May 2010, Henry was pretty much the only thing that kept me sane. No matter how out of control I got, I knew I had to be around to take care of him. And he was great company during what otherwise would've been an unbearably lonely time. I mean, he didn't say much, but he liked to snuggle and take walks with me and stuff. I was also amazed at how quickly he adapted to our new apartment in Astoria. As he'd only known one home in all his ten years, I was afraid he'd freak out and howl like crazy whenever I left the house, but he understood immediately. I guess it helped that all our stuff was in the new apartment!
I'll close this "Trip Down Memory Road" with a few things you may not know about Henry:
- He has developed a bad habit of biting through garbage bags on the side of the road, trying to get to the food waste within. I constantly have to yank on his leash to get his head out of a bag, and more than once I've discovered bits of trash bag in his poopy.
- He's very gentle. He likes people a lot, as well as most dogs. Puppies have a bit too much energy for him at this point, but he doesn't start fights or anything.
- Although he certainly bit the hell out of me back when he was a teething puppy, the only time he ever bit a person during his adult years was once when he was doped up on sedatives after a veterinary procedure. A home contractor was walking through our living room when Henry suddenly lurched awake, trotted dizzily across the room and bit him on the thigh. Thankfully the contractor didn't sue! He did, however, stop showing up shortly thereafter, even though the work wasn't finished. No big deal though, as he also left a really nice jacket behind, which I've now worn for years!
- He loves to chew the eyes and noses off of stuffed animals. He has probably destroyed over a thousand stuffed animals in his near-eleven years on this Earth.
- He has a great sense of direction. On several occasions over the years, he has led me directly to a doggy friend's apartment, pet store or swimming hole when I had no idea where the Hell we were going -- usually after only having visited the destination once or twice before.
- He gets very, very nervous at the vet. I'm not sure why, since he doesn't even seem to notice when they give him a shot or take blood. Maybe he just smells the sickness and death in the air?
- He sometimes misunderstands spoken words and gets really excited seemingly out of the blue, as I struggle to figure out what he thought he heard. In the past, this has occurred with words such as "Mexico" (which he heard as "Petco"), "Scrabble" (which he mistook for "Kibble") and "rawhide" (which he heard correctly, but it was actually my then-wife singing "Rawhide").
- He's extremely scared of thunderstorms, to the point that he freaks out if he even hears me say the word "rain."
- Whenever I shout a curse word, he walks over to give me a kiss as reassurance that everything's okay.
- He's the best dog in the world.
Oh hang on, it's starting to blow. (*20 minutes later*) Hmm. I guess it's okay. (*28 days later*) AHH! ZOMBIES! (*escapes zombies, listens to album*) Ah yes, Harold Pudd. He's no Fuddy-Dudd, that Harold Pudd! This ambient disc is actually more of a melodic album than an ambient experience, featuring 10 tracks of lily-tender sustained piano motifs (half-melodies) backed by Eno's synthesizer wash. And by "synthesizer wash," I of course mean that Brian would plug in his huge electronic keyboard and jump into the bathtub with it. If you ever want to be as brilliant as he is, I suggest you do the same and NOW. (post-haste). If you want your home to feel a certain way for four minutes at a stretch, this CD is the one for you. There is no unifying theme to the music, which veers nearly unpleasantly between implausible splendor, soap opera soundtrack melodrama, smoky bar depression, Pink Floyd innerspace melancholia, Bacharach-style hotcha! and dentists' office new wave meditation yuppie humiliation. Considering how easy it is to find five piano notes that sound good together, it's a bit disappointing that Hairy Pud only scores miners' gold about 60% of the time. Still, that 60% of the time, you'll be ambienting your ASS off! DANCE, DANCE, DANCE to that AMBIENT RHYTHMLESS SOUND of Harold R. "Budd" Dwyer!
In finale, each of these tracks WILL effectively transform your listening environment into a (a) field of stunning yellow love flowers, (b) 1940's saloon lounge of drunks and barflys, (c) General Hospital soundstage, (d) opium den with David Gilmour or (e) proctologist's waiting area. But the true question is::: is that what you want? What you really really want? Will you tell me what you want? What you really really want? You wanna huh? Wanna huh? Wanna huh? Wanna huh? Do you really really really wanna zigga zigga - UH?
If so, yuck! Aren't they all pregnant except for the one with the eating disorder? I don't want some embryo grabbin' my skin pecker!
Christ, I really do make a lot of penis jokes, don't I? That's the sign of a strong writer! And by "writer," I of course mean "flesh-colored instrument that writes in sticky pearl-colored ink on wet, pink surfaces."
Hi, I'm Bill Trumpet! BRAPP BAPP BOOPY DOO!
Best,
This review so far is fantastic. Let's keep this level of high quality going.
Little over a year ago, I was married to my life partner of 15 years and living in a big apartment on the upper east side of Manhattan -- depressed due to unemployment, but otherwise sure of my standing in life. Now I'm dating a completely different woman and living in a tiny apartment in Astoria, Queens - still unemployed, but working temp jobs here and there and thinking about entering the education field. Life has changed. Dramatically. Up until Cinco de Mayo 2010, my life had followed a set and steady course. Now the future is a gigantic Oyster filled with Mystery. There's an important message here for you young people: life is never set in stone. If you have a good job, you can't expect your luck to last forever. When you get married, you can't assume that your spouse will want to stay with you for life. Honestly you don't even know if you're going to wake up tomorrow -- let alone free of cancer. It's a depressing message, but one you need to learn, if only so you don't freak out as badly as I did when everything went to Hell last year. Luckily, things eventually went back to Heaven, with God and Jesus.
Possible Musics is pretty amazing, and let me tell you why: I listened to it the first time a few months ago and came out of the experience thinking, "Yuck, it's just a bunch of weird and wiggly synthesizer tones!" Then I listened to it a second time a few nights ago and wrote down notes like "Tugboot synth hooting," "The synths sound really dumb, like munchkins talking through a vocoder," "Goofy synth 'LAA LA LAAAAAA's," "synth making horse whinnying and bird chirping noises" and "woogly synthesizer tones woogling and wiggling around like a Zappa guitar solo." I am no fan of stupid synth noises for the sake of stupid synth noises, so my attitude was streets behind, as you can imagine. But then I looked up the album on Wikipedia.
THOSE AREN'T SYNTHESIZERS.
Eno and Hassell have somehow run the latter's trumpet through so many different effects processors that it winds up sounding nothing like any brass instrument you've ever imagined (unless you've imagined a brass synth, in which case KNOCK IT OFF). Its bizarre tones range from the hypnotic to the ugly-as-dirt, while resolutely sounding nothing at all like a trumpet. Apparently what Hassell is attempting to do is perform Indian classical music through treated trumpets atop World Beat percussion. In practice, this means a bunch of unrecognizable sounds sliding portamento up and down the scale (reminiscent of The Residents' '70s work), atop light keyboard washes, tape loops and conga beats. At its best, this results in wonderfully odd soundscapes of KrAzEe-Trumpet, oceanic ambience and rhythmic groove. At its worst, it's a bunch of gross squoogly vomitous puke throw up barf.
Fans of jazz and ambient music are much more likely to enjoy this than me. I greatly prefer rock music, due to the massive amounts of testosterone running through my body. See how bald I am? That's due to the manly testosterone coursing manlike through my manly manhood. In fact, here's a little song about how manly I am:
HOW MANLY I AM
Adam's apple, yeah yeah yeah
But enough about reasons, rules and regulations. Laraaji is a black fellow who -- oh wait, I forgot something. As far as I know, there's no town in England named "Dadiance." However, if there were, and the Kinks' lead singer was born there, he'd be -- get this, you ready? He'd be Laraaji plays peculiar otherworldly stringed instruments like the hammered dulcimer and the zither and whatnot, creating gloriously beautiful swirls of radiant tones that sound like Heaven filled a piano with holy rats, who are scurrying to and fro, making the strings reverberate with the most miraculous, optimistic plucky noises ever heard - on this world or any other. The first two tracks are a completely different kind of "ambient" though -- they're fast, vibrant and filled with bouncy excitement! I think what makes them "ambient" is the fact that they're hypnotic; they kinda work around one motif for 19 minutes, bringing in subtle changes here and there, but mostly just celebrating the dance of some far-off foreign land (it kinda reminds me of the Sun City Girls!). The last two tracks ambience though. "Meditation #1" is almost PERFECT ambience: Pensive, harplike and consoling, like a mystical psychedelic journey with the breeze blowing gently through the chimes on the terrace. Its follow-up is a little random and directionless, but maybe you're supposed to be asleep by then, resting your pretty little head on the feathers of another hard-earned day.
So you see, all it takes is a neat stringed instrument for an album to appeal! That's why I'm going to learn one chord on the banjo and record me playing it for 74 minutes. Then I'll call it Ambient 5: Day Of Banjos and watch the money roll all over town!
The Talking Heads are an anomaly in my record collection. Like the Police and Bruce Springsteen, they are a band to whom I gave high marks here on the old web site and who I'm fairly certain I enjoy and respect wholeheartedly as artists and dreamers, yet I never, ever, I mean EVER get the urge to listen to them. The music is well done and intricate, but it's just not ever what I'm in the mood to hear. Therefore, it's not the biggest surprise in the city that My Life In The Bush Of Ghosts doesn't get a whole lot of airplay on WPRI-FM, KNDL-AM, or E-TV. It essentially foreshadows the direction that Eno and Byrne went on Remain In Light and Fear Of Music, combining rich world beat African tribal rhythms with a sort of humiliating Caucasian funk music. Except that HERE, on THIS album, instead of David's nerdy and paranoid yet charming and idiosyncratic voice wowing the crowd as Tina Weymouth takes a crap on her bass and lets it slide off onto the people in the front row, Eno and Byrne use samples as vocals and 500 thousand guest musicians as a rhythm section. Strange names like "Bill Laswell" and "Busta Jones" may not mean anything to you and the other unwashed masses, but to an underground music connoisseur and educator such as myself who spends every waking moment digging out the latest and greatest of the avant-garde music scene, these names are synonymous with "the guy who produced Brain Drain" and "the guy who wrote the music for 'Chasing The Night.'" And that's your lesson for the day, newbie.
The nicest thing about this record, and the part that you will appreciate most I'd wager, is the fact that (a) most of the beats are incredible -- your ass will be dancing til your feet show up!, and (b) Ego/Burn wrap each track in a literal envelope of samples, strange noises and instrumental patterns (piano/organ/guitar/bass) that seem to constantly walk all over each other. Most of the songs only have one part, but they pour on so many odd instrumental sounds (bodhran, bata, sticks, can, congas, agong-gong, metals, click bass, found objects, rooks) that even Mick Jagger would find himself singing, "I know it's not really rock and roll -- but I like it!"
(*hires Canadian Mafia to kick own ass*)
ERERFaaaa -- what I MEANT was that even Mick Jagger would find himself singing, "You make a dead man come (in my mouth,” and by 'dead man,' I of course mean 'David Bowie and/or Pete Townshend')."
(*gives self five*)
(*up high*)
(*down low*)
(*is too slow*)
Getting back to the negatives, where all reviews belong, it couldn't have taken Bino and Urn more than four minutes to write every single "melody" on this record. There's almost nothing to any of them, especially the depressing funk songs, which are driven by the most outdated '80s "bwow!" wah-wah funk bass/synth effects this side of probably something Peter Gabriel has been involved with I'd imagine. And see, that's the problem with most pop artists who try to work world music into their sound: by the time the idea occurs to them, they're already old, stodgy and so far out of touch with good music that they think glossy studio production with the latest technology (i.e. that which will sound out-of-date in six months) is an appropriate way to sweeten the sweaty soulful sounds of Nigeria. But it's NOT and it sounds OLD, WEARY and STUPID. You have to be young, in touch with the dirt and far away from luxury to merge the two successfully: thus, I present to you The Sun City Girls!!!!!
This isn't a Paul Simon review though. Eno and Byrne were still somewhat young when they recorded this work, so it's only like 1/4 lame. Any fan of mid-period Heads will be totally into it for the expansive beats and keen racket alone. And I didn't even mention the sampled vocalists! Why, there's an indignant radio host here, an inflamed caller there, a Lebanese mountain singer under that rock, a New Orleans reverend hiding behind the couch, an exorcist showing at theaters near you, Algerian Muslims shouting the Qu'ran before flying planes into a building, the Moving Star Hall Singers moving things around the stars and the hall as they sing, and even an Egyptian popular singer! Who knew that Egypt had any popular singers besides Steve Martin of "King Tut" fame?
To conclose: At its best, The Bush Of Wads And Ghosts is rhythmtastically noisecellent, but at its worst, it's not at all drumeriffically racketerrific. In fact, you might say that at its worst, it's downright "funked up!"
(*murders self, shits in self's mouth, brings self back to life, makes fun of feces-retching self while masturbating into self's underwear drawer*)
I know it's unfair to judge it against such a
demanding benchmark as 'Passion', but that's the fault
of the record-reviewing community at large, it isn't
my doing. When all is said and done 'Bush' isn't an
uninteresting record and doubtless an important
landmark in the careers of both Eno and Byrne, but I
strongly object to its being considered the classic
it's often considered to be. A diverting footnote,
nothing more.
Apparently Brian and his record company received hostile warnings from Muslim representatives at the time (long long long before 9/11) to remove this track as it contained passages from The Koran and they were mighty upset about this.
Can be downloaded....hee hee...Go WWW!!!
Brian Eno has spent more time on land than most people have spent underwater, so it's a little disappointing to hear that he's come to associate it with fake jungle noises and embarrassing synthesizer attempts to recreate world music clichés. Parts of it work -- in particular the heavier-than-an-anvil rumbling that drives the first two druggy Pink Floydy hums "Lizard Point" and "The Lost Day." These two tracks roll along oppressively like gallons of lava down the side of an active mountain, occasionally revealing bits of peeping, cawing and even some violins and keyboard notes as the river of fiery death envelopes the forest and local operahouse.
The rest of the album unfortunately doesn't live up to the media hype generated by these two "like nothing you've ever heard unless you've been buried alive in an avalanche" soundscapes. Too often, Mr. Eno ruins his perfectly valid electronic landscape paintings with out-of-date technology blurps -- everything from beautiful but out-of-place rays of sunny organ melody to unnecessary Pete Townshendy fuzz-brapple experimentation (a la "Eminence Front") to diarrheaingly bad wiggly bendy fake Indian crap. The hypnotizing tones and drones by themselves are exceedingly evocative, because you can't figure out how the hell they were created: they SOUND like tectonic plates ripping apart into separate continents! But then the sampled animal pips and fake third world instruments bring you right back to reality: this is some guy pushing buttons in a studio. Studio Line from L'Oreal, that is! Studio - Studio - Studio Line from L'Oreal! Sculpt your hair -- any way you like it! Ahh yeah, can I get a shout-out for that awesome Sun Ra song "Space Is The Place (With the Helpful Hardware Man)?" Also, just for the record, I do apologize for constantly singing Paul McCartney's "Silly Love Songs" as "Some people wanna fill the world with smelly ballsacs." At very least, it makes more sense than my just-plain-bizarre rewrite of ELO's "Don't Bring Me Down" as "I'll tell you once more before I jam things up my ass - Don't grab my butt!"
"Frankly, Mr. Shankly" (to quote a Smiths song) I think that these 'songs' are boring. Seems to me this is the recipe:
- - - synth drone or two playing 1 or 2 notes for minutes on end.
- - - layer on 'nature' sound effects.
- - - add sporadically throughout album a few trumpet and guitar notes here and there.
Overall I much prefer Ambient 1 or even Discreet Music to this album.
Well, one man wasn't content with his lot in life, and this man decided to build a wonderful spaceship in which he could fly away with his little dog to worlds yet unknown, pioneering the field of alien-human communication and founding a new outer space landfill. Unfortunately, this man was bald and had no schooling, so instead he recorded an album designed to recreate the sensation that a smarter, more covered with hair man might experience while tunneling through the cosmos at the speed of light speed (45 miles an hour). That album is Apollo and that man is none other than Ian Boner.
Without warning, Eno does a spectacular job of emulating the cold, dense, empty, unfeeling vacuum of space on this album (especially the first two tracks and final epic), establishing a low one-note rumbling drone that he then augments with space shuttle beeps, frightening whale-like martian noises, the occasional peaceful hum and..... ahhh.... a steel guitar. And this is where the concept falls apart a little bit. After five or six tracks of pure drone (or near-drone), suddenly Eno hops out of his spaceship to join a boring house band. What in the world slow country ballads and romantic pop compositions have to do with space is never explained, leaving the listener wondering if Eno perhaps just slammed two EPs together so he could release something. It's no secret that Eno has always been in it for the green - he sold out the minute he recorded his first 35-minute song with two notes, and has been churning out the same MTV-ready lowest common denominator horseshit ever since. But who am I to assume I understand the deepest inner workings of America's finest British composer? After all, when you "assume," you make a "sum" out of "as" and "e." (for example, "as" + "e" = "ase").
Getting back to the program, my description of Apollo Warehouse: Songs And Stories reads as follows: some heartless, brilliant, frightening murmurs followed by a few straightforward instrumentals with bass and steel guitar (a couple of which are actually pretty good, but again... why are they on this record?) and ending with perhaps the finest sluice of arctic poisonous martian-infested air on the whole record - the 8-minute "Stars." So enjoy this wonderful journey through space and country-western balladry that Messrs Eno, Eno and Lanois have created, but take care, young interstellar traveller. And never forget the foreboding words of the ad campaign for that first Alien movie: "In space, nobody can find The Scream."
Ha! Little topical Munch humor for you there. Hopefully the police won't have already found the painting by the time you read this, because then the joke would be "out-of-date" and not "topical" at all! No "Ha!"s, no nothing! Nothing but tears and me in jail with an enlarged anus hole.
"Eno and the Moon were made for each other."
".....but what I find impressive about that music is that it’s very concerned with space in a funny way. Its sound is the sound of a mythical space, the mythical American frontier space that doesn’t really exist anymore. That’s why on Apollo I thought it very appropriate, because it’s very much like ‘space music’ — it has all the connotations of pioneering, of the American myth of the brave individual, and that myth has strong resonances throughout American culture."
BOOKS
MOVIES
CDs
WHORES
Yes, we all had quite a time on my 32nd birthday, with the pleasant presents, pheasants and peasants. I don't remember seeing your name on any of the gifts, but we all have our own ways of showing appreciation for those who work hard to regularly provide us with arguably entertaining record reviews for over nine years. Perhaps you feel that completely ignoring somebody is the sincerest form of flattery. Or perhaps you spent all your money on marriage enhancers to make up for your miniscule penis and premature ejaculation issue. Either way, please accept my sincerest thanks for nothing.
On to the work at hand. When Herman Melville wrote Harold Budd, he never thought that this simple tale of a mistreated sailor would someday capture the imagination of British record producer Brian Eno, but we can't know everything in life and this is just the proof I needed to demonstrate that fact to you. Score one for Ol' Prind!
Like Eno's first collaboration with his Buddy Harold, this CD presents Budd playing his piano with incredibly supple grace, softness and subtlety as Eno adds warm hypnotic hums and whooshy electronic ambiance. The difference is that, where Plateaux Of Mirror had no unifying theme, this one features eleven tracks of similar tone, feel and melodic intent -- that of Autumnal solitude, melancholy and trepidation. It conjures up post-Summer days at dusk, with the chilly breeze, setting sun and red/gold/brown leaves wringing up long-forgotten feelings of loneliness and fear for the future. Some of the tracks are actual piano melodies; others are just brief ambient note runs repeated at an inanimate object's pace for six minutes. Either way, the piano tones are so beautifully softened with prodigious reverb, delay and Budd's naturally light touch that you'll feel like you're drifting away on a cotton cloud wrapped in a blanket of marshmallows.
That's because when you weren't looking, I wrapped you in a blanket of marshmallows and threw you off a cliff! HA HA HA!!!! FUCK YOU, ROADRUNNER!!!
Don't listen to it in the dark though - it may SOUND beautiful, but don't get too close or the augural hooks will rip your brain in two with scaredyness. Baleful? Shit, man. You ever got your nuts stuck on a chalkboard? These hooks are as lowering as THAT. Picture a giant malefic squirrel with a dick full of string beans. I mean, these minatory melodies will have your ass clenched so tight only a member of Styx could squeak through. Talk about unpropitious!
This is where his theory breaks down for me. It's easy to ignore a painting; just turn your back. It sits quietly in the corner, perhaps drinking a cup of tea. But music never shuts up. Music rattles on and on and on no matter where you go. Engage in conversation, read a beverage, smell a cigar -- it's STILL THERE. And in the case of "Thursday Afternoon" (unfortunately not the long-awaited sequel that all of us Moody Blues fans were hoping for), it's about five spongy electric piano notes played in various orders but no real melody -- for SIXTY-ONE MINUTES. And sure, Sixty-One Minutes is an excellent television series, but they're all getting pretty old and baggy, aren't they? And what's with Harry Reasoner's fucking eyebrows? What, did he cut swatches from his rug and just glue 'em up there?
But we're discussing a record album. One entitled Thursday Afternoon, in fact. For the first few minutes, the five or so alternating notes are striking, unforgettable, superb, saintly, placid, relaxing, just as they were intended to be. And then you can sorta let it zone out as you go about your business, wiping the baby's diaper on your wife or whatever, but around the 20 minute mark, there is NO WAY that you can sit still and not think to yourself, "Say! He's still playing the same notes!"
Around 35 minutes, anger sets in and things start getting thrown. Not by you necessarily, and perhaps only on the TV by men in football uniforms, but the throwing is nevertheless taking place SOMEWHERE in the world, so just as a butterfly's wings cause a hurricane on the other side of the globe, Brian Eno is affecting the outcome of sports events by recording boring go-nowhere half-assed shit music for old people.
By minute 50, you can concentrate on NOTHING IN THE WORLD outside of that motherfucking cocksucking repetitive asshole electric piano playing its mindless, ball-numbing five-note melody over and over and over and over and over and over as if people don't have feelings and should be expected to sit still and let drops of water slowly drip, drip, drip on their foreheads for 61 minutes at a time.
If you actually make it through all 61 minutes, the telephone rings and a voice tells you that you're going to die in 7 days.
YOU WEREN'T SUPPOSED TO HELP ENO!!!!! DON'T YOU UNDERSTAND???? HE NEVER SLEEPS!!!!!
The piece never repeats itself, a bit like Autechre's Anti-EP. The said piano notes coagulate in a different way each time, and the background drones and harmonies develop constantly, with dischords and harmonics and all sorts of exciting shitty.
I used to write essays to this about 50 years ago and it would make me speed up and slow down, chill down happy or get uptight. That's the throwing bit right there, the uptight bit - there's actually these virtually subaural high things happening in the background and that why there's throwing. It's really clever, see? Really detailed, too. Clever record. Clever.
Now go review some John Cale albums. Start with Slow Dazzle.
You may be interested to note that this, ahem, "song"
was used as a weapon against my girlfriend and I! A
rather nefarious jukebox programmer held an entire bar
hostage for one hour with this damn song! The
harrowing story was printed in a Sunday edition of the
New York Times, but now you can only read it if you're
one of the hoity-toity paying members! However, the
"More Dark Than Shark" Eno fansite (or is this the
artist's own site?) still has it. Thought you might
get a kick out of it:
http://www.moredarkthanshark.org/index.html?eno_int_nyt-jun06.html~frameHOME
I actually like the idea of musicians writing songs for little children to enjoy with their excitable, underdeveloped minds, but I'm unfortunately almost positive that this was not at all Eno and Cale's intention with Wrong Way Up. Their goal appears to have been to set aside mature artistic provocation for once in their lives in order to cut loose with a happy little pop record. However, between the simpleton "New Monkees"-style two-chord melodies of obviousness, 80s cornball synth-and-lame-funk-guitar arrangements, and soulless, spot-free production, the end result is a record that isn't so much "mindless" as "braindead." If you've ever heard The Moody Blues' The Other Side Of Life or Phil Collins' later, completely synthetic material, you probably have a pretty good picture of what this album sounds like: a bunch of A-E idiotic sugary bunkum and minor-key forays into detached exoticism that will leave you wondering how you missed the theatrical release of Walt Disney's Wrong Way Up. Even more depressingly, it plants the brainseed that perhaps Eno actually gave up pop/rock for ambience not out of artistic curiosity, but because he had completely forgotten how to write an original melody. Either way, one thing's for certain: I probably shouldn't have told my wife that I'd like to nail those two girls in our Tae Kwon Do class.
On a related note, I probably shouldn't have posted on the Internet that I'd like to nail those two girls in our Tae Kwon Do class.
Unfortunately, most of the material that follows can be summed up and immediately dismissed as "lots of slow, piddly electronic beats with looped samples, unpleasant synth noises and guitar/sax solos spread artlessly across the top like a peanut butter and jelly sandwich made by a one-fingered man." Alternately, one could obnoxiously and closed-mindedly yet entirely correctly refer to it as "Ugly Tones Playing Ugly Music" (or "U.P.C.H.U.K.")(roughly). It's mostly instrumental, electronic and science fictiony with hardly a melody to be found between the gross noisy solos, which actually makes a sacka loada sense since it co-stars infamous lead guitarists Bobby Quine and Bobby Fripp (along with former Led Zeppelin bassist John Paul “Georgenringo” Jones). There ARE a few decent Zappa-y, unorthodox and/or unpredictable tracks on here (adorable jazzy speed-rap "Ali Click," suspenseful fuzzfest "Web," disorienting piano solo "Decentre"), but not enough to wash the taste of all the other sub-Barnes & Barnes devoized brapps and froops out of the listener's already piss-filled mouth (from drinking piss at a San Francisco Piss Club). Yes, Brian Eno truly 'ARRIVED' in '92, alright. And by 'ARRIVED,' I mean 'ARRIVEDERCI!' Remember that old cartoon "I Hanker For A Hunk O' Cheese"? What the hell was that yellow thing that was singing the song? Was it a big piece of cheese? That was going around eating other cheese? I think it was. I think it was indeed a big piece of cheese with a cowboy hat on, going around eating other, smaller pieces of cheese that it had drugged, sexually abused and murdered in its apartment. And what about that dazed, bloody Thai cheese that ran to the cops, only to have them re-release it to its certain doom when the big piece of cheese with the cowboy hat on claimed it was just a gay lovers' AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH PFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFTTT. Sorry about that, I fell off the enormous mountain of hilarity I'd built.
I'm the one who threw the hay at the Bombmarket.
No, hang on - that's not ri - AH yes, I remember:
I don't find ambient sounds in general to be all that interesting. I usually just tune them out, as if they were a crying woman. And even if I DID like ambient sounds, I'd probably move out to a jungle or something so I could hear actual real-life bird noises; I certainly wouldn't sit around my inner-city penthouse condo in the projects listening to some guy resting a bookend on three synthesizer keys for 45 minutes. And really, isn't that the problem with this record? The fact that, although it claims to have 10 different tracks, every single one of them is basically the same exact sinister, spacey, wintry, bloodcurdling, abandoned atmosphere repeated over and over again? Most people agree that I'm right, at least on this count. Consensus is not quite so universal about my plan to end the Iraq conflict by loading the U.S. onto a big truck and simply placing it on top of the existing Middle Eastern trouble spot, thus squishing all the foreigners and creating a Middle Eastern state friendly to American interests. Three huzzahs for industry! BUT WAIT A MINUTE!!!! If we were all over THERE, who'd be over HERE making sure Gordon Lightfoot isn't up to something shifty? CURSES! Here we shall remain!
Shutov Assembly? Yeah, I'll Shut it Ov (off) , alright! Who needs tedium? At its best, it sounds like early post-Syd Pink Floyd, but with no melody or climax (like post-Roger Pink Floyd!). Aside from the alarmingly realistic electrical hum in track five, the four-note keyboard bass line in track three and the high-pitched tones that hurt my dog's ears in track seven, every "composition" is just a dark goopy bowl full of moody organ tones, peculiar bassy groans, swishy swooshy noises, bell-like synth notes and tinkly outdoor chimes. And by "tinkly," I mean "I pissed all over your outdoor chimes."
If you want to feel like you're in outer space, buy Apollo. If you want to feel like you're in outer space and BORED OUT OF YOUR MIND, this is the one to reach for. Reach for it by name! Wait a second -- you can't reach for something by name! Ha! Jeez, I'm glad I caught that before this article went to press; people would have found that statement simply confusing and absurd! How then would they have been able to take the rest of these reviews seriously? (*poops on own head*)
Graceful electric piano notes with heavy sustain -- five or (at most) six notes that sort of create a slightly suspenseful (NOT relaxing) motif, intended for "Thinking," according to the single song's subtitle. It certainly did have me thinking, "Why the hell would anyone spend money on this?!" But then I remembered how many people are into meditation, spiritualism and so on. Those people would probably like it. And there's certainly nothing wrong with those people, no matter how silly and boring their lifestyles may seem to orgiastic coke-snorting Hollywood jetsetters like me and Britney Spears. If they find peace in holistic medicine and dashikis, who am I to call them self-deluded potheads? The simple fact is that, as grotesque and horrifying as I find these subhuman cultists to be, my "truth" is even more worthless than theirs. Look at how stressed I am all the time, with my money concerns and feelings of overwhelming responsibility in the corporate capital of the world. Wouldn't I be happier living in the woods in a tent, sucking LSD tabs, reading Nietzsche and bedding herpes-ridden gypsy girls? Of course I would. We all would.
And that's why I'm meeting with you and other venture capitalists today to discuss my concept for a brand new e-commerce business, www.NakedHerpesRiddenGypsyGirls.com! Think "SuicideGirls-meets-Burnout-Hippy-Morons." Believe me - there's a market of tie-dyed smelly tree-huggers out there that'll pay through the nose for this shit, and I'm certain we can line up earth-saving dumbfucks like Ben & Jerry's as advertisers. But hey, as my mentor Donald Trump might say, "YOU'RE FIRED!"
- - - -
_ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _
- - - HA! I haven't even seen what you came up with, but I bet it's hilarious!!! If it turned out especially unanticipated and mirthful, you should totally take a picture of the screen and staple it to your refrigerator door. (If it stinks, staple it to the inside of your refrigerator door, near the odor-neutralizing baking soda). Say! On the topic of men's cologne, how about a hilarious joke for you?
I made this up, so keep your expectations really high: Q: Why did the gay man flunk out of his typing class? HA! See? We're all laughing because gays, blacks, foreigners, women, Jews, bald people, fatties, religious nuts, the homeless, old bags, rednecks, jocks, surfers, metalheads, punks and nerds are inferior to us normal people! There, now that I've got you greased up with a little comedy foreplay, it's time to penetrate your hot, sticky mind with my turgid flesh Brian Eno review.
Headcandy lets the user view an ever-changing kaleidoscope of shapes and colors set to original music by Brian Eno. That's the word on the street, at any rate. Supposedly you put some silly glasses on, toss the disc in your computer and crazy things whirligig around while you listen to the music. Somehow the kaleidoscope wasn't included on the MP3 disc that guy from Serbia sent me with five billion Brian Eno albums crammed on it, so I'm only familiar with the music. And music indeed! Three of the songs, at any rate. The other two are half-butted pippity beats with whooshing and feedback on top. But those other three tracks are so songy, they could have been built in a Song Factory! Not ambient, but modern-sounding, electronic, well-played Meat Beat Manifesto-style trance-dance instrumental technology pop with bass lines and delusions of special K drug taking. "Castro Haze"? Driving and trippy on a cool bass line, strange piano chords, swoops of indiscriminate keys and a relentless bongo rhythm! "Beast"? A happy lil' organ line over bouncy industrial reverbed drums. Like Radiohead on a sunny day! "Alloy Balcony And Jets Overheard"? Hey! What are you, my mother? I'm not here to describe every song for you! If that's the kind of critique you want, I suggest you go visit one of those other shitty record review sites like www.healthpart.com/provider_SiteVisitMedRecReview.asp because I don't play that game, Jack! I'm Mark Prindle - Fearless Reviewer Of Today's Toughest Electronic Records! In fact, I think I'll have that printed up on some business cards: "Mark Prindle - F.R.O.T.T.E.R." That'll show the world why I stand alone in this field!
Jah Wobble was the original bass player for Public Image Ltd. and the guiding light of the young and restless Second Edition LP. But we'll never relive the past, so why remember it? In the '90s, Eno sent Wobble some tapes of him (Eno) playing -- OH! By the way I went into a video store today and what were they playing but ENO! One of those good '70s albums. But haven't I been listening to enough of Eno in my private home? Must I really hear him when out and about with the ol' nag? So Wobble tacked his bass and trippy dub effects on top of Eno's 60s-toned synth/keys/organ compositions (DAZZLING TONES!). And they all lived happily after ever.
The finer half of these ten songs are highlighted by such ear-sweetening delights as dancey electronically treated rhythms, hypnotizing PIL-style bass lines, ringing triangle tings, monkeyed-with violins, swirly phasers, elegant chimes, homey pump organs, acid-licking backward guitar/organ solos, mathematically pleasing gamelans, swirly ethnicism and a guy tapping one end of a guitar cable with his finger while the other end is pumped through a phaser effect. Unfortunately, the weaker half is lowlighted by such ear-rotting audio disease as Seinfeld-esque slap bass, tuneless synth burbling, dumb wah-wah funk guitars, stupid dated fake drums, unintelligent vocal samples, ignorant slowly-paced piano boredom, unlearned off-rhythm piano lines and dropped-out-of-high-school ambient swooshes of nothingness. You can still dance to it, but you'll be alone and looking foolish.
Much like a loose whore, when this album is good, it's very very good, but when it's bad, you get genital warts and a mouthful of some other guy's sperm. You need to understand something - words do not appear out of nowhere. They are formed by minds - GREAT minds - and these minds are not always in top-shape mood. Mine is particularly hanged-over at the moment, thanks in advance to two hard nights of blackout-level binge drinking, like a cool guy in a fraternity. Asking a hanged-over mind to emit an ebullious record review is like asking a mandarin orange to not be deliciously tart. Impossibilities resist your every demand, and the dark of the still night is overshadowed only by my own fatigue and slight muscle ache. Still, Spinner is a pretty good record. If you like SHIT! Or also if you like good music. (Or SHIT!)
April 25 - I can't stop laughing at how great Perfect Strangers was
tonight! Balki was on fire, doing the Dance of Joy and saying "Get out of the
city!" at every opportunity. I don't know how Larry can keep from cracking up
every time that kook opens his mouth, but I guess that's why he's the TV
celebrity and I'm the guy who presses three notes on a keyboard for half an
hour. Speaking of which, I recorded two really good songs tonight. One is a
slow dark keyboard piece I call "Orchestral Marstall" -- fuzzy, eerie and
surprisingly well-written! I don't know what drove me to write an actual melody
for the first time in 20 years, but there you go. The other is a piece called
"Mad Jazz Piano" that's this really fast and strange piano riff that's doubled on
bass and complemented by rat-a-tat drums. It's kinda Zappa-esque and quite
oddball. I'm very proud of it -- it may be the most notes I've ever played in
one song!
July 26 - My mouth is killing me. I accidentally bit off part of my tongue
while laughing at tonight's Just the Ten of Us. Wendy was being her usual ditzy self when Graham shot out this one-liner that drove my knee straight into my face with hilarity. Now there's blood all over my beanbag chair and a gaping hole where my Glossopharyngeal nerve used to be. I thought it might
cheer me up to record eight minutes of high-pitched reverbed noises and a couple
of piano chords, but all it did was upset Bono, my cockatoo. He was screeching
and throwing millet all over the place. Every one's a critic!
August 4 - Tonight was one of the most embarrassing nights of my life. I
haven't wet my pants since I was a little boy, but tonight's Mr.
Belvedere was so over the top that I couldn't control myself. I was
holding it in pretty good through all of George's antics, but when Angela came
in and said "Hi, Mr. Bumpersticker!" it was too much to take. My bladder gave
way and a pungent flood of urine coursed from my lapworm, thoroughly soaking my
pants, couch, floorboards and driveway. Even worse, just as I'd removed my
pants to throw into the hamper, Kevin came down the steps in a tuxedo, leading
Heather and Wesley to sing, "There he is, Mr. America!" That was all it took to
release a speeding jet of projectile diarrhea from my anus, and the next thing I
knew my date had left in a huff. Luckily, Howie B came over a couple hours
later and we recorded a hot funky hip-hop sensation akin to yesteryear's
"Rockit." I guess five minutes may have been a bit excessive for a song in
which nothing happens, but we were having such fun! Also, the dryer was still
going so I couldn't leave the house anyway.
September 27 - Is it just me or is Head of the Class not as good as it
used to be? I don't know; Arvid's still funny and all, but it just
doesn't seem to have that magical spark it had at the beginning. But how about
that Unabomber, eh? And Steve Forbes running for President? Also, eBay was
founded earlier this month. In celebration of these historic events, I recorded
a low drone, two keyboard notes and a doorbell.
September 29 - After tonight's a.k.a. Pablo marathon, it's amazing I can
type at all. Three straight hours of non-stop Paul Rodriguez hilarity had me
laughing so hard I thought my cheeks were going to rip apart to make my smile
bigger. I was so revved up afterwards, I recorded a jazz song! Well, sort of
a jazz song. I used my sci-fi nerd synthesizer, so it's more like a Devo/jazz hybrid.
It came out pretty good! Now I think I'll sit on my ass for the next five
years.
Speaker 1: Knock knock!
According to legend passed down from generation to generation until I read it on the All-Music Guide (a web site from which I steal lots of record information and reviews word-for-word) that Brian Eno records a lot of music for "installations." For example, if a man comes to your home to install your cable, Brian Eno will record some music for you. I believe that The White Cube was one such installation. I've also learned through my many, many years of research on the work of Brian Eno that the ambient tracks on this record were created by Brian standing on various streets humming one note into his tape recorder as it picked up all the (appropriately enough) "ambient" sounds around him, then going home, eating all the tapes and placing an entire recording studio at the bottom of the toilet bowl.
This is another one of those Eno releases that brings to mind a headline from a recent issue of The Onion Comedy Newspaper: "Experimental Band Theoretically Good." Sure, it's a neat idea, but -- and I say this about the work of John and Nicholas Cage quite often too -- why not use the idea as the SPRINGBOARD of an actual piece of music? You know, rather than just recording a tedious collection of echoey traffic noises, reverbed thunder, mesmerizing but monotonous tones, trains and assorted construction noise?
Once again, it IS an interesting idea, and a couple of the tracks really stand out from the pack: track 6 in particular is extremely ominous, full of industrial grinding, ticking and humming like a nuclear meltdown is occurring on your stereo deck again, and track 8 will make your baby's head explode with its REALLY FRGIEKDING LOW throbbing bass noise and "in-your-face-and-up-your-nose" Right On Top Of You Traffic noises. But even THOSE moments go on for far too long. One of these crazy things is 25 minutes! TWENTY-FIVE MINUTES! Of "ooooooooo" and some cars going by! So save your money, walk to the side of the highway and go "ooooooooo" for half an hour. IT'S THE SAME THING. Having said that, if you actually LIVE in a white cube, this might be totally up your kaitin' alley. Or your cursty alley. You know, whichever adjective you prefer for your alley. "BOWLING alley???" Fuck you, asshole! However, if your name is Peter Thomas Allston, this might totally be up your harperv alley, P.T.A.
I'm going to move on to the review portion of the review now. When I was a wee child of 416 fortnights, my non-sexual companion Christian Smith began recording solo keyboard pieces under the nom de plume "Christian Religion." He wasn't the world's highest-paid or classically-trained musician, but his simple, wonderful little melodies (created from pre-programmed pippity drums and cheaper-than-one-dollar keyboard tones) still meander through my head to this very day. He was able to take the lamest technology in the world and still bring to life a whole slew of funny, zippy little riffs for the ages. On The Drop, Brian Eno tries to beat him at his own game and FAILS! FAILS! FAILS!
Doctors will have to answer the question of why Eno chose to record an entire album of dopey instrumentals performed on shitty, fake-sounding keyboards, because nobody but doctors and lawyers have had the schooling to work through such a tumultuous issue and lawyers are too busy lending their charity time to the poor and needy. You know how even when the '80s-era Residents tried to create a moving, real-life type song, it always sounded fakey because of the hypersynthetic tones that their asshole equipment created? That's what happens to the tracks on The Plop - they'll make you feel absolutely NOTHING. They also remind me of Frank Zappa's synclavier work in that the songs feel as if they were composed by the instrument itself with no human input of any kind. None of this would be so bad if not for the fact that (Name that Jesus Lizard song!) a lot of the melodies are devoid of hooks. There are maybe seven tunes on here that live up to Brian Eno's name “Christian Religion” - songs packed with Trans Am-esque portentous electronic motifs, snappy rhythms, silly goodtime jive, experimental distortion/hum/noise and a couple of "so bad they're great" archaic plastic funk jams that would fit perfectly into a Disco Stu skit. However, the worst of the others are built around such unnecessary evils as seemingly random piano notes, phony hurdy-gurdy, faux-Eastern mysticism, overdramatic failed intrigue, and puny melody to NO melody. Plus the overall feel is just so fakey and gross! It almost sounds like Eno recorded a normal collection of keyboard-driven instrumentals, then pulled out the tapes and rubbed cherry-flavored lip balm all over them while masturbating (I don't know why masturbating - I just like the thought of Eno masturbating). Alternately, another theory that you might consider would be that of Eno running the entire rough mix through a Satanic "soul-removing" machine before releasing the frosty, empty shell of impassive music into the cassette deck of society.
While masturbating. The bottom line is that if you think this Ell-P rox, yor stewpid!
Now that I've justified my refusal to take Brian Eno's "art" any more seriously than I take a little picture of a cartoon ghost taking a crap, I'll move on to the album nigh at hand (nigh) -- I Dermatology by Brian Ego. One song for 40 minutes. Or rather, a series of sinister yet soft reverbed electric piano notes for 40 minutes. But this one works okay actually, because there's constantly all kinds of sewage running in and around the speakers: echoed spoken half-words ("Of!" "of, of, of..... "-ING!" "ing, ing, ing...."), air-slicing electronic static noises, whispering voices, clattering, buzzes, zings, piano notes, sparkly sparkledust and bass observations that pop in only to immediately sink lower than low. If this was for an art installation, it must have one spooky installation!
Boo! AUGH! You've scared me, you installation! (The preceding dramatization was based on actual events.) So sure, if you're gonna put on some ambient music and you're not afraid of fear itself, I Dormienti is fine. But as the only remaining Ramone, I should warn you that it's pretty much the same thing over and over for 40 minutes. Also, earlier I said that Eno invented ambient music, but that's horse nonsense. Tangerine Dream invented it, and nobody in the history of the world prior to 1969 ever even considered the idea. So stop your research! Anything you find about John Cage and liars like that was made up after-the-fact by historical revisionists. Is that who you normally get your music information from - people who claim the Holocaust ever happened?
Kerry: We shouldn't have gone into Iraq. I never would have done that.
Am I just cynical or does it seem like the Democrats PURPOSELY picked a candidate too wishy-washy to sway undecided voters away from President Asshole? It's almost as if somebody wants 2008 free for a Hillary Clinton White House run. Hmm..... (Hmm....)
In times like these, the only way to reduce the stress of everyday knuckle failure is through sitting around the logfire and swapping old-time kite stories. You know, stories where a scary kite goes around a campside murdering teenagers, or a kite leaves his hook on a car door handle, or you find out that the guy was flashing his lights at you because there's a kite in the back seat. But kids these days grow up so fast, they're too busy leasing boat mortgages and closing asset-based lending transactions to enjoy a warm-hearted kite story.
And that's why Brian Eno's latest album Kike Tories is the perfect hemorrhoid ointment! You see, when part of your colon pops out of your anus and rubs painfully against the toilet tissue,
This album has one 30-minute song. It's frosty, it's spooky, it's unhard, it's a few notes played on an electric piano with heavy sustain and some tremelo. It oozes like syrup, bores like a dentist drill and repeats itself some 40 billion times -- like Metal Machine Music without the BALLS! Of ultra-extra letdownitude is the fackqt that Eno split the piece into three separate -- yet nigh on exactly the same -- "tracks." Can anybody provide a reason for this? If so, that's great. Write it on a paper airplane and sail it up your ass. I'll come in and read it next time I visit Skid Row.
You do still live next door to Sebastian Bach, right? If not, let me know your new address. Best!
Best's Insurance News, that is. HA! Haaaa! "National Underwriter"? More like "Irrational Underbiter," if you ask me!!! HA HAAAAA! And don't even get me STARTED on Property & Casualty Insurance Magazine!
Jesus, did I even mention the album?
I hope not. It's terrible. Say! Is it obvious yet that I have no idea what an electric piano actually sounds like?
APPETIZERS
"THE QUIET CLUB" TASTING PLATE(R) - Low Drones, Reverbed Vibe Chords, Eerie
Mysterious Tones, Echoey Siren Swirls(R) and Squishy Noises with three
dipping sauces: all-natural vocoder, scratchy noise and tamarind horn
tones. Add a high-pitched signal for an additional charge.
CIVIC AND RECOVERY FUN-DUE - A creamy blend of drones, vibes and sireny
swirls topped with high-pitched signals. Served with toasted scratchy noise
slices.
SOUPS AND SIDE SALADS
ALL YOU CAN HEAR AUDIO SOUP - We offer one variety of audio soup daily
using only quality ingredients and signature noises. Because we truly
believe in providing you the most tedious experience, all one of our audio
soups is offered for either 45 minutes or in an "Endless Loop."
VOCODER GREENS WITH EERIE MOOD & NIGHTTIME FEAR MUSIC - With our siren,
vibe and squishy noise vinaigrette.
DEEP DISH PIZZA
NUMERO ENO. THE ONE. THE WORST. - A 'works' pizza with drones, vibes, eerie
tones, echoey siren swirls and our unique chunky squishy noises. Topped
with scratchy noises and our grated Vocoder.
FARMER'S MARKET PIE - A vegetarian version of the 'works,' packed with
drones, vibes, eerie tones, echoey siren swirls, squishy and scratchy
noises, and Vocoder.
DESSERTS
ENO DEEP DISH SUNDAE - Eerie ice cream, scratchy sauce and swirled sirens
atop a giant low drone cookie freshly recorded on a deep dish tape. Also
available in 'mega-boring.'
"THE QUIET CLUB" ALL AMERICAN - Granny Smith vocoders tossed with vibes and
high-pitched signals, baked with a mysterious reverb and squishy scratch
crust. Served dull with siren swirl ice cream and whipped horn tones.
COCKTAILS & FREEZERS
ENO SOUTHSIDE VOCODER-ADE - Made with Hendrick's Drone, Eno Fresh
Vocoder-Ade and a spritz of forboding vibes.
MARGARITA DE SU CACA - Inspired by "The Quiet Club," our shitty repetitive
ambient piece that makes up the entirety of Music for Recovery Civic
Centre. Sauza Vocoder, Dronetreau and fresh siren swirl.
KID'S MENU
MAKE YOUR OWN PIZZA - We give you your own apron, vocoder, synth and sound
effects. "You do the rest!" Even a 4-year-old could do better than "The
Quiet Club."
TINY BRIANOS(R) - Brian Eno-shaped chicken served with choice of putrid
ambient project.
*Items marked with an asterisk may be cooked to order. This is why none
of the items are marked with an asterisk. No matter what you order here at
Pizzeria Eno, you're going to get the same exact boring ingredients
repeated over and over and over and over and over until you want to rip
your brain out and throw it across the room. Consuming raw or
under-written drones, vibes, vocoder, siren swirls, scratchy noises or
echoey squishes may increase your risk of earborne headache, especially if
you have any taste at all.
You know what it reminded me of? The time I was forced to listen to a Yoko Ono album. That rancid tripe made me want to vomit all over the floor and lick it up, but everything else about it sucked! The problem is that my sensitive ears can't handle audio sounds that are too high, low or assaultive, and unfortunately Compact Forest Proposal has them all. When Daddy wouldn't turn it off, I hurried to the bathroom and tried to hide behind the toilet, but discovered to my surprise that I couldn't fit. And sure, I was able to get a refreshing drink of water while there, but that hardly helped my raw nerves.
And another thing -- when the CD wasn't annoying, it was just BORING! Have you ever worked on a stuffed animal for five or ten minutes before realizing it doesn't even have any eyes or nose on it? That's what this album was like -- just nothing to chew on! Plus every time that low rumbling came in, I'd have to check my butt to make sure I hadn't farted.
The only positive thing I can possibly say about Compact Forest Proposal is that all those low bass drones will give your woofers a workout. They did me, at any rate.
Best,
Your review touches my heart. You're a good dog. In fact, you have my permission to go back in time and attack Brian Eno so that this album might have never been made. I'll leave the keys to the DeLorean with Mark and the Doc will give you some instructions about what to do with the body.
Your friend in time,
Drawn From Life is for late night listening - it is at turns bachelor paddy, romantic, sexy, sorrowful, intriguing, lame, beautiful and buttmunchingly boring. The tones are timeless though, full of the latest Stereolab sparkledust, reverbed room-shaking drums - hecKKK, even the rhythmless mood pieces sound torn from yesterday's PowerTools. It's impossible to sidestep the occasional overloud vocal (Laurie Anderson, Brian's children, some asshole in "Intenser," Peter Frampton's vocoder in "Two Voides" and "Rising Dust") or yawny waft of directionless organ splash, but the winningest tracks are absolutely mesmerazing -- my favorite being the island haven peace and crickets of "More Dust" (Yeah - ANGEL Dust, maybe!!!! You fucking drug addicts!!!!). If you're trying to impress some sexy young thing (a slide ruler or cardboard box, for example), this smooth dark trip-hop is probably the only Eno you'd want to risk playing. But if you're just sitting around naked in your socks eating a bowl of Cheerios, you may want to pick a different one. Because this one's a little too sexy and before you know it you'll be NAILIN' those CHEERIOS!!! UHHHH!!! UHHHHH! UHHHHH!! WITH YOUR LITTLE TINY PINESTRAW-WANG!!!!
For his latest opus, "Diamond Dave" Eno has pulled out every bell in town and is just ringin' em like a crazy person inside a mental asylum with doctors. If you're not driven raving irritated by the 24-minute opening epic of SHIT, hang in there because some of the later material is actually half-interesting! To wit ("Tow it!," I shouted at the visibly drunken AAA guy. I was hop-biting mad by the time I screamed at his manager, "SEND ME A AA AAA GUY!") (that wasn't worth the effort), as the work develops, Brian stops just clanging the phuqers indiscriminately like a petulant child or childulant pet, and begins exploring topsy-turvy new ways to coax sound from the bells without actually striking them, disproving an important Wire album title in the process. But they sound like electronics! Are they really bells? They're beeYOOtiYOOful! Other tracks find and point at Brian Eno placing five or six bells of different tone side-by-side and composing a sorrowful or suspenseful little melody on them. These tracks are generally short and make it awfully clear that Eno could have made one heck of an entertaining, unique record had he kept all the songs under two minutes. Because it's all BELLS, see! He's got them reverbed and delayed a bit, but they're BELLS! When he uses them to create unearthly ambient tone combinations or interesting, slightly off-key melodies, they sound cooler than an ice cream cone! So what does he do with the rest of the record? A buncha shib. 24 minutes of directionless ringing. Striking incongruent tones together just to enjoy the ugly noises they make. Expending too much effort trying to get the after/undertones of various bells to do something neat together (on occasion they DO, but it's rare. Most of the time, they just clash with each other). That's what I think anyway. And I do a lot of thinking about bells, so you can trust my word on this one. Oh hang on, no, it's balls I'm always thinking about. Big hairy smelly balls. God I love women with big hairy smelly balls.
I am Captain Robert Fripp of the Starship EnterpriKce. Today I and my
assistant captain Brian Eno blasted off from NASA headquarters in Florida
on an important mission to the equatorial stars. Bill Bruford asked to
join the mission as well, but I told him he's not ready.
Captain's Log, Stardate 8.08
Today we reached "Meissa" in the constellation Orion! I was so excited, I
grabbed my guitar and played a solo so loud and bassy that the star
crumbled to pieces and drifted away. A startled Eno described the scene to
Ground Control as 'starless and bible black,' but I told him we weren't here
to talk about that album.
Captain's Log, Stardate 7.45
This morning we reached the "Lyra" constellation. Its name is Latin for the
lyre, a stringed instrument that dates from classical antiquity. In
tribute to this most musical of the constellations, I played a boring
guitar solo.
So far, Eno doesn't seem to be contributing much to this
mission at all.
Captain's Log, Stardate 5.03
Today, at long last, we reached "Tarazed" in the constellation Aquila. We
probably would've gotten here weeks ago, but Eno looped the ship's travel
coordinates. I suspected something was wrong when we passed
Capricornus for the third time, but he claimed it was Capricornus Pt. III,
and how would I know!? In my anger, I wrote a really cool riff and then
played it one mile an hour.
Captain's Log, Stardate 5.09
We have been imprisoned in the "Lupus" constellation for nearly a month.
Let me explain. When we arrived, I honored the mythical wolf with my
finest space improvisation yet: a dark, eerie
sci-fi piece coated in swirly phase and flange and set to the beat of Eno's
echoing footsteps. The piece was so satisfying that I was hardly
surprised when it attracted the attention of a strange hybrid creature that
had the head and torso of a man with the legs and tail of a lion. Still,
this was amazing. I knew we were embarking upon a new era of intergalactic
friendship and cooperation as I watched this incredible extra-terrestrial
beast make its way to our ship. But then it tried to compliment my
playing, so I angrily shouted "I don't need that!" and whisked it away with
my hand.
How was I supposed to know that a rude brush-off is considered an insult in
the Lupus constellation?
Captain's Log, Stardate 7.01
We are now at "Ankaa," the brightest star in the Phoenix constellation.
Interestingly, Paul Anka is the brightest star you're likely to
find in Phoenix, Arizona! I've been there, and they're idiots.
I'm
getting bored with this space voyage. It's all windy and bassy, and I
can't think of any riffs. I'm starting to wonder why Greg Lake bankrolled
this mission to begin with.
Captain's Log, Stardate 5.11
Today we landed on the Aquila constellation's "Altair," where we should've gone directly after Tarazed since
it's like right next door, but that's what I get for putting Brian "Music For
Assholes" Eno in charge of the itinerary. I didn't even bother playing
a solo for this stupid star, instead letting Eno screw around on his
synthesizer while I chatted with Ground Control. Get THIS: apparently Greg
Lake has announced a worldwide tour of 'The Original King Crimson'
featuring himself, Ian McDonald and Michael Giles! And you know who they
got to replace me on guitar? John Stamos!!!
Captain's Log, Stardate 9.40
Earlier today, we departed from Terebellum, a quadrilateral of stars in the
constellation Sagittarius. I was too bored to play anything and just sort
of wiggled my dick against the strings for ten minutes. But finally we're on our way home! I'm so happy about this development that I even let Eno perform an electronics
improvisation for me. Our HAL 9000 computer interrupted to tell me
something about the pod doors, but I shushed it while motioning towards Eno
with my patented 'condescending' face. That shut it up! Rude computer
plebe.
Steve: "Look out! Here comes a truck!"
See? I just saved the world with my "referring to trucks as 'Trucky'"
breakthrough. I urge you to type a synopsis of this event and staple it
inside your history textbook and Bible.
In 1982, Brian Eno, his baby brother Roger, and world-famous record
producer Daniel Lanois collaborated on an LP entitled Music for Films
Volume 2. In 2005, the track listing was reorganized and an additional
eight songs added for the CD version I am reviewing here, entitled More
Music for Films. Unfortunately, the boneheaded CD company put one song
on there twice under two different names (while leaving off the *actual*
song with the second name) so be aware of that if you choose to buy it.
The album mostly consists of simple ambient pieces and incidental music
but, with none of the first 15 tracks even reaching the 2:15 mark, they at
least end before growing too tiresome. The usual piano and electronics are
employed heavily, as are guitar, bass and occasional drums. And the
instrumental tones are flat-out heavenly. For all his faults (i.e. boring
terrible albums), Eno has the ear of a Sonic God. This is why when you
rearrange the letters in his name to spell "No Brain," there's an "E" left
over. That "E" stands for "Excellent."
Notable highlights are few, but include the groovy beat and great Primusy
bass line of "Chemin de Fer," the warm pulsating electronic chord
progression of "Dark Waters," the jaunty Tom Waits-styled playful danger of
"Marseilles," and the lovely piano ballad "Always Returning (II)." The
rest run the gamut from pleasant piano melodies and interesting electronic
experiments to gross guitar noises and directionless drones. My written
notes include such detailed descriptions as "eh," "bland," "not really a
song" and "sucks, boring."
I'll tell you one thing that really pisses me off though: "Melancholy
Waltz" isn't melancholy at all. In fact, it's downright cheerful! Also,
"Don't Look Back" isn't a Boston cover. That's so fucked. Think of all
the little kids! They love Tom Scholz and bought this album expecting to
hear a Tom Scholz cover. Why God, why WHY WHY!?!????!!?
God I'm tired. Let me take a quick nap.
Z
Okay, I'm back.
The CD is split fairly consistently betweenly twoly typesly
The CD is split between two basic types of music: the majority are calm little songs with neat and/or annoying electronic noises coursing through them like hydrochloric acid through a human vein, but a few key entries position themselves more strategically as dark science fiction excursions among the inner space human psyche depths of audio terror. Eno utilizes (or "uses," if you're "hep" to the slang lingo that the kids of today consider to be their "bag") light piano notes, warm synth washes, swoopy bass lines, electronic rhythms, billions of futuristic noises, the occasional guitar, and veritable CHORUSES of multiple-part vocal harmonies to create a collection of songs that are at once playful, mellow, fucked-up, unpleasant, calming, dark, happy, ethereal, soothing, silly and arty, though not all at the same time.
This album is like a box of chocolates - "You never know what you're gonna get."
"And also, if you eat the entire thing in one sitting, it will likely return to its home in the form of 'vomit'." But that's partly because you're not supposed to eat compact discs. More directly, you're sittin' here listenin' to the fackin' CD and thinkin', "Oh hey there! Yeah, that's a cute little harmonious vocal melody there! Sounds like somethin' you might hear on Electric Street or The Sesame Company!" and then before you even have time to remove the warm butter from your ear, a creepy pulsating sub-bass noise and some weird echoey alien noises slice through the atmosphere with bitter retain. And the album continues like this from beginning aft and fro! Hells, one of them just sounds like an alarm clock being held captive in a loop within the time-space continuum; try listening to THAT one if you have a pacemaker or functioning ear!
But that's what life's about, vaguely. Unfortunately some of the songs are more 'pleasant' than 'beautiful,' and others are more 'ugly and annoying' than 'intriguing,' but still it's so nice to know that the jerk actually CAN still write good normal (for him) music that's not just one beeping noise for 45 hours. Get Up Off That Earth is a light-hearted and soothing opportunity to relax on a soft ottoman, take a load off your 'dogs' (feet) and let the soothing sounds of weirdo electronics and 45 singing Enos drift your weary mind away to Peaceful-Peaceful Land. However, don't freak all out when three of the songs frighten the Crap out of you.
And yes, I did purposely capitalize the word 'Crap.' For I was speaking of a single particular Crap - not just any old crap! No no, this Crap of which I speak stands alone as a sole providor of power and enlightenment. Since the dawn of time, man has yearned to meet his beloved Crap and h
Wait a second, am I --
Oh hell, I'm sorry! I of course meant 'God,' not 'Crap'.
Man my face is red - I'm constantly getting those words mixed up. You should have seen the congregation's face when I told them the sermon about taking a gigantic stinky god on the roof of a car!
I just found out that my boss has been cheating me. If my calculations
are correct, she owes me somewhere in the ballpark of $15,000. I'm a
bit preoccupied with this issue at the moment, so excuse me if this
review is less enthusiastic than usual.
Twenty-six years ago, David Byrne and Brian Eno collaborated on My
Life In The Bush of Ghosts, using rich tribal polyrhythms to create
a bready hue of pre-Graceland world beat funk. Now they've
reunited for a bunch of slow pop songs.
With age comes fatigue and a desire for people to stop honking their
goddamned horns, and these songs are nothing if not relaxed and
soothing. Luckily for those of us who despise sleep, the best are also
driven by extremely pretty vocal melodies. "Home," "Everything That
Happens," "The River" and "One Fine Day" may be about as musically
experimental as the last twenty Motorhead albums, but Mr. Byrne fills
them with such beautiful voice noises (singing) that even your tears
will be weeping tears at their angelicosity.
Unfortunately, Byrneno do occasionally stray from the gentle optimistic
bliss-tones at which they excel, and it's these moments -- particularly
the endless, anxious and abysmally-sung "I Feel My Stuff"; corny Hall &
Oates r'n'b sexathon "Strange Overtones"; and vomitous mixture of Keith
Richards guitar, The Wall 'dicka-dicka-dicka' and shitty club
music "Poor Boy" -- that grab onto the album's Quality Pants and pull
them down to the Ankles of Mediocrity. Seriously, if you need a
metaphor, just let me know.
Most of the songs are performed on the instruments you'd expect
(acoustic and electric guitars, bass, keyboards, piano, electronic or
acoustic drums), but a few also feature horns and/or strange synthesizer
tones. Don't expect to be blown away, because you won't be. It's just
a slow collection of melodic, gentle pop songs. David Byrne is sounding
great though, even at his advanced age (he's 169).
So that's the review. Now let's move on to the stupid bullshit.
It may seem difficult to believe, but not everybody in the world loves
the wild and woolly stylings of MarkPrindle.com. Here are just a few of
the many negative comments you can find online if you dig deeply enough
into the nation's sewers:
"Is it just me or is he a pretty sub par writer?"
"Who is this guy? Does he actually have respectability as a critic? He
comes across like a 12 year old with ADD and a bad sense of humor."
"Maybe this guy's a high school student, and in that case his writing is
somewhat understandable, but otherwise, fnck him."
"He just doesn't come across as likable or interesting to me. He comes
across as the type of person who if I accidentally become friends with,
I'd screen his calls and avoid him at all costs."
And granted those were all by the same guy, but my point stands. Some
people just can't handle the HILARIOUSNESS that has prevailed on this
UNBEFUCKINGLIEVABFUCKLY FUCKNNY WEB SITE for the past 12 years. And so,
in celebration, I hereby present:
Here are the nominees. Hold all your calls, because you've got a
Laughter Meeting scheduled for the rest of the afternoon.
1. "Plus, it has a song called 'Mommy, Can I Go Out & Kill Tonight?'
that is CLEARLY hardcore!!!! You know what that means? They're goin'
hardcore, lanky! Hold your wife!!!"
(Ha ha! "Lanky"!? What the?! How does he come UP with this stuff?)
2. "Two young studs from the hot hills of New Hope, Pennsylvania, Aaron
Freeman and Mickey Melchiondo rechristened themselves Dean and Gene Ween
and began a career of profane absurdist music by turning on ye olde
four-track and slayg 'em down and slack 'em jack 'em."
("Ye Olde"!? Nobody says "Ye Olde" anymore! Where does he GET these
ideas!?)
3. "My only bitch is that they destroy 'The Last Time,' which is one of
my all-time favorites - ever since I was a child. A young boy. A man
trapped in an infant's body. Screaming for release. My soul an oyster.
My mind a pearl. My tummy a vacuum. But oh, how they ruined my song,
with that jokey twangy lead guitar making a mockery of my beloved
melody. To this day, it makes me wanna punch a guy in the nose.
Twice."
(Like a roller coaster of steam and dirt, this gag builds and builds
until -- with a perfectly timed "Twice" -- it overflows hilarity all
over your pants!)
4. "WHAT THE FUCK DO YOU MEAN, THEY HAVE 24 MORE ALBUMS?????? DO I LOOK
LIKE A GODDAMNED STEREOLOGUE?????"
("STEREOLOGUE"!!!!!! Is this guy just making up his own words!?! It's
like he's from outer space! Hilarious!)
5. "You've heard these riffs a hundred times before, I'm SURE of it!
Stop telling me you haven't, you lying sack o' beans!"
(He's talking to the reader as if the reader is in the ROOM with him!!!!
Man, this guy - he, he.... And cowering in awe, I'm unable to complete
my statement!)
6. "Man, I fucking hate this band. Should I go get McDonald's? It's
kinda late in the day, and I don't wanna spoil my dinner, but I'm a
little bit hungry. Ahh screw it, it's snowing. I'll just eat a
magazine."
(BWAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! YOU CAN'T
EAT A MAGAZINE!!!!)
7. "All sorts of things are blended together to make the music much more
interesting than, say, Better Than Ezra (or, more appropriately,
Better Than Almost Nobody)."
(ZING ZING ZING ZINGITY ZING! He NAILED that band that nobody's
heard from since 1996!)
8. "But I'll paint myself a slightly unattractive hue of orange if I
don't love the resulting disc de wax!"
("de"? I don't think I get that one. No wait! He's speaking
SPANISH! What drugs is this guy ON!? And how can I get
some!?!)
9. "It's also one of the most irresistibly catchy LPs ever thrown at a
Mexican!"
(see this huge grin on my face? I got it from reading that bit about
the Mexican)
10. "They sound a lot like the best tunes from the last few Anthrax
albums - YOU know the ones I'm talking about! (insert sound effect of
crickets making cricket noises, to signify that nobody has heard the
last few Anthrax albums and that, in fact, nobody has even THOUGHT of
the word 'anthrax' in years and years! Ha ha! Can you imagine having any
reason to think of the word 'anthrax'? Aww jeez. This is such a
wonderful day, this September 10th, 2001)."
(*FARTS*!!!)
AND THE WINNER IS:
GRAND PRIZE WINNER: "Plus it's got 'People Are Strange!' Psychedelic,
eh? Furry too, eh? Echo? Bunnies? Eh? Who? Huzzahs to the chef!"
Look, I'm all one for irony and sarcasm like the next guy, but with this
next paragraph, I'm speaking to you from the soul.
As the years soar by and my personality and preferences slightly change
(as they'll do), I find myself absolutely loathing the reviews I wrote
even five years ago. I despise my old writing style. It sounds
arrogant, childish, faux-hip, and worst of all, completely witless. Some
of the one-liners are okay, but I far too often present myself as a
hyperactive unfunny jerk who thinks he's better than everybody else.
It's both frustrating and embarrassing to know that half the people who
happen upon this site are introduced to my writing through godawful shit
like the quotes I've posted above. People will say to me, they'll say,
"Hay Mark why don't you just re-write them?" But have you seen how many
pages I have on my site? If I were to re-write every one that bugged
me, I wouldn't review a new band for the next five years! GODDAMN YOU,
YOUNGER VERSION OF ME! WHY DID YOU USE THE WORD "YE" SO OFTEN!?!
So really it's up to you to enjoy my shitty reviews as much as my
slightly less shitty reviews. Remember: anybody can like something
good, but it takes a true individual to appreciate utter shittiness.
And I guess people age, as Eno and Byrne will never see 52, nevermind
22.
Hey, i'll never see 42, or 46 for that matter ever again.
This album review sounds fine.
You have no reason to sweat your style of reviewing, even though you're
most likely goofing. I'm still getting through your Miles Davis stuff.
Lordy....
I heard a couple months ago Byrne was doing a show in Brookyn recreating
Bush Of Ghosts witha bunch of other artists for hundreds of dollars per
ticket.oh well, mebbe some went to charity.
My fave rants by you include but are not limited to the Bowie album
where you worship Nick Cave, the Billy Zoom interview, and the Miles
Davis chapter.
Thanks for being a sparkplug in the ho-hum of diaretic journalism.
That's right, journalism.
peace out, Mark
First of all, Brian Eno has snuck into the United States and by a majority
vote by our people IS NOT WANTED HERE. All I can see in the future is
ambient music and that is NOT AMERICA.... Most Americans will NEVER FORGIVE
Eno for the ambient albums that were CHEAPSHOTS especially since we take in
British artists and give them a place to live peacefully. Unfortanately
they DO NOT fit in our society so they build their NATURAL ANGER towards
humanity and record terrible albums to HURT US. We DID NOT INVITE YOU and
DON'T WANT YOUR INFLUENCE.......
However, Eno's winning streak continues with this evocative instrumental
disc recorded with Jon Hopkins and Leo Abrahams. A grab bag of eerie
melodic songs, aggressive rhythmic noisescapes and unsettling ambient
pieces, these 15 tracks contain some of the creepiest and most startling
sounds of his entire career. Although some of the material seems a bit
underdeveloped, it would make for a great horror movie soundtrack. Best of
all, it sounds like he actually *tried* this time out, instead of just
rubbing his dick against a glass for 40 minutes.
This comeback is a second chance from GOD
and Eno should continue in his praise to him...this will be a hard road for
him because with all the fame he may get so overwhelmed that sends him back
into the hands of shitty ambient music....I hope with all this new
found fame he knows he has the lord on his side to help him through this
The tracks are filled with echoing Floydian organ tones, overmodulated
guitars and looped noises galore. #4 - #9 also pile on loud electronic
beats and swishly fuzzy techno/dance craziness. So get your ears wiped and
ready because booming doom and gloom, Throbbing Gristle industrial creep,
unidentifiable whoo-whoos, shuddering rubbers, crang-rock guitars, feverish
aggro, boobly wooblies, buzzes, treble, sci-fi, static, white noise,
ceramic clanking, lawnmowers, power stations, heartbeats and tea whistles
are all gathering together to throw a party in your pants!
Dont let this recession go to waste Washington libtards. Now is your time
to tax and spend so we cant afford the new Eno album. God bless America. I
am glad all you forigners and people who never bought an Eno album got a
say in my given right's. Glenn Beck is 100% RIGHT! You people don't know
what being an Eno fan is. So sit down and shut up! I am getting sick of you
trying to tread on me and millions of others who feel as I do. Brother I
know I'm not alone!
Now here are some jokes I just made up and posted online under a news
article:
Q: Why did Brazil last week experience horrific mudslides that killed 355
people and left survivors scrambling to reach still-trapped neighbors?
Q: How many tree sitters does it take to change a light bulb?
Q: Why did Osama/Obama cross the road?
Okay, I'd better stop there and get back to studying the long-term effects
of
tetrachlorodibenzoparadioxin on palmitoyloleoylphosphatidylethanolamine.
But I'll see you soon in the comments section under an online news story!
Having released an astonishing three good albums in a row, Eno decided it was time to get back to his roots and put out a gigantic pile of chopped-off penises. Not only does Drums Between The Bells feature his least interesting music of the past seven years; it's also crammed full of idiots reciting shitty Rick Holland poetry really loudly in emotionless text-to-speech voices. What is the point of such a boneheaded project!? Isn't poetry supposed to involve emotion on some level? Isn't that in fact the reason it EXISTS IN THE FIRST PLACE!? But no, these British men and women simply recite every word in a single robotic tone, again and again, track after track -- to what end I have no idea.
Eno's musical contributions aren't much better, mostly alternating between cheesecorn '80s electronic beats and soft guitar/piano pieces. There's really not much melody of note, as the emphasis is clearly more on the (terrible) poetry than the (also terrible) music. Highlights include the Front 242-ish industrial/electronic "Bless This Space," lovely harmony-sung "Cloud 4" and gently emotional instrumental "As If Your Eyes Were Partly Closed As If You Honed the Swirl Within Them and Offered Me... The World." Weak spots include nearly every instance of a human being opening his or her mouth and allowing sound waves to pass from his or her body into a microphone, which then converts the waves into audio and records them onto magnetic tape, where they are converted into diarrhea and sent gooshing out of my speakers to splatter my home and dainties.
The bottom line is this: Eno's music here is underwritten, oft-ambient and not among his finest work -- not that that's saying much, since most of his albums are two notes going "doodly doodly" for four fucking hours. More damning is the fact that even gigantic Eno fans will have a hard time enjoying DBTB due to some dumbass's idea to have the poems recited in unpleasant, graceless monotones.
Also, am I nuts or are Lance Henriksen and Geoffrey Lewis the same guy? Hollywood should do something about that, in general.
Eno is comfortable in space, with his heavy reverb, strange electronic tones and desolate soundscapes. But when three of his nine songs are ambient BULLSHIT and the others are full of icky noises or take forever to get going, I don't know.... I mean, I like "Needle Click" and "New Moon" a lot! In fact, I just listened to "New Moon" on Monday, and Killing Joke's Fire Dances through the night. Then I stayed the cold day with a lonely satellite.
Sometimes I think the worst day of my life was when I allowed George Starostin to convince me to do a Brian Eno page. Now I have to spend the rest of my life reviewing -- and even worse, listening to -- 400 albums a year of "OOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO." And I'd like to just say "SHUT UP!" but most of them are instrumental so he already has.
This could've been such a good record had he stuck to the stark sci-fi melodies and not turned into Ray Lynch's Deep Breakfast - With Tang, Because We're In Space halfway through. It's neat how spacey the whole thing is though. In fact, you might say it's KEVIN Spacey! HA HA HA!!! No, you probably wouldn't say that.
Hey, you know how the Friday the 13th masterpiece art film series had that "Jason in Space" entry, and then Fellini's "Leprechaun" franchise had "Leprechaun in Space"? Well, I was just thinking, "Wouldn't it be awesome if they ran into Brian Eno out there?" I think it'd go something like this:
(*45 minutes of one note*) CHAINSAW AAAAAHHHGHGHHGHGHGHGH!!!!! BLOOD SPLATTER DEAD BRIAN ENO
This is pretty interesting: a few minutes ago I was in the bathroom poop-texting somebody (holding the phone up to my large intestine and squeezing in and out in order to tap each letter with my hardened fecal log) when suddenly Brian Eno plopped out into my toilet. "Hay what are you doing" I said, and he said "What? I'm a piece of shit." So I said, "No you made a couple good albums 400 years ago." Then he played one note in my toilet for half an hour.
One of the ambient songs on here is called "World Without Wind" which is ironic considering it's just him sitting on a keyboard having bad gas for five and half minutes.
Okay, looks like I've covered all the poop and fart fans out there - now it's time for you booger afficionados!
(It's not really time for you booger afficionados.)
In short, Making Space has a nice outer space vibe, a few gorgeous moments and lots of potential, but I'd stick with Here Come the Warm Jets.
Okay, looks like I've covered all the urine fans out there.
Eno goes "dee-diddle-dee-diddle" or "buzz-buzz buzz-buzz buzz-buzz" or plays a soft reverbed eerie effected piano or some warm organ songs - one is an instrumental, one sounds like a song Roger Waters would do, one is just a drone blah blah ugly Scottish woman and her stupid accent FUCK YOU.
Okay, it's official. I have now reached the point of ZERO percent interest in writing record reviews.
One of the lines is "My excretions." Thanks for the poetry, Rick. You know how your last name is "Holland"? Well, it should be "TURKEY." Because you're a TURKEY.
No wait, I changed my mind. I'm really really super-excited about writing record reviews.
Here's a joke:
Why did the chiclet cross the road?
How many record reviewers does it take to change a light bulb?
Why is six afraid of seven?
Who gives a shit about Brian Eno?
Click here and some Brian Eno CDs may soon be yours! (via purchase) PURCHASE!
Oh, I think I left my scrotum whole
Up there on the totem pole
Hippity-hoppity
Balls are on their way
Hello everybody, I'm Tom Jones and welcome to The Tom Jones Celebrity Warehouse! Tonight on the show we've got Sarah Purcell of TV's Real People, Steve Lawrence of TV's Foul-Ups, Bleeps & Blunders and a chicken that plays Connect Four! But fi
This is, indeed, the worst record of all time. I would rather pull my own teeth out than listen to this. It's a -10
Oh wow! I love this record! While I agree that Swastika girls does suck, the first side - "Heavenly Music Corporation" is among some of the most powerful and sublime music I've ever heard. It's not Eno that makes the track, its Fripp. His soloing is so fraught with emotion, and his tone is thick and mean. I'd give it a 7 for that track alone.
Sometimes I miss those innocent young days when I thought this album title referred to some hot airplanes flying through the air. Just flying free like a breeze on the wings of the night of a dream and a prayer of a life ever after. But watching women piss has its nostalgic charm too, I suppose.
Phil Manzanera's 1975 'Diamond Head' (featuring several nifty Eno tunes)
is a natural companion LP to 'Warm Jets.' If you like this type of
thinking man's glam, next stop: Be-Bop Deluxe. (Guitar man Bill Nelson
also got the ambient bug later in his career, too bad.)
Here Come The Warm Jets is a great debut. How you can go wrong with songs like "Baby's On Fire" (love that Fripp guitar solo) and "Cindy Tells Me"? Not as ethereal as Another Green World or any of his truly ambient works, but still good experimental and clever rock. By the way, doesn't the vocal melody on "Needles On The Camel's Eye" sound too similar to the one on "Sunday Morning" by The Velvet Underground? Eno must have loved these guys...
God how I love this album. Very easily a 9 for me, in fact. Funny that you mention the best songs both in the same parentheses: the first and the last. I don't know that any other album opens on such a beautiful adrenalin rush as "Needles in the Camel's Eyes"--three notes and the LP's already one of your favorites. And then the last, which, as you probably know Mark, is practically an anthem in the eyes of the ever-so-literate arbiters who are WXYC, Chapel Hill. I love love love love love this album.
An easy 9 for me too. I borrowed the record from my Uncle about 4 or 5 years ago, and taped it. I eventually wore the tape out, so I now have it on CD. Pretty much every member of Roxy Music (except for Bryan Ferry, of course) contributes, as does John Wetton (who was in King Crimson at the time). As for the comment made by Akis Katsman above, the vocal melody of "Needles In A Camel's Eye" does remind me of Velvet Underground's "Sunday Morning". Or maybe it's just the power of suggestion. The solo by Fripp on "Baby's On Fire" is one of his best. "Driving Me Backwards" creeped me out when I first heard it. I love how at one point in the begining of the title track the drums out out of sync with the other instruments. The only thing that I don't like that really stands out is the electronically manipulated (guitar?) solo in "Paw Paw Negro Blowtorch". If Eno was striving to find the most annoying sound for a solo, he succeded with flying colours.
As I sit here, in Primghar, Iowa, watching crappy, terrible, CMT (Country Music Television), I think to myself........ hmmmmmmmm..... there's this song sung by this very ugly woman called "My Give a Damn's Busted"........ and I really hate it, it's probably the worst song I have ever heard, I'm actually mad. Then I see this video of these guys who look like the Grafeful Dead..... except these guys (I have no idea who they're called) have an unfortunate hit which will never reach number one or anything, but it's still bothersome and it's lyrics could have been written by a some 6th-grade Jewish kid........ oh wait, Jewish kids are smart, I wish I was Jewish.
I believe if I were to compile a 20-greatest-albums-ever-recorded list, it would be a reasonable, but sad affair. All stone-gold, acknowledged classics: Quadrophenia, Abbey Road, All Things Must Pass, Arthur, Beggar’s Banquet, London Calling…
If you've been down to the Shiznit Store lately, you've probably noticed that every shelf is stocked with copies of Taking Tiger Mountain by the band Strategy. Well, there's a good reason for that -- this album IS the Sh
I came across this album while looking in the Brian Eno section of my former favourite music store (it moved) called Into the Music. I had originally went there that day to purchase No Pussyfooting by Fripp and Eno, but it had disappeared. Disappointed, I went straight to the Brian Eno section, and found a *new* (unopened) copy of Taking Tiger Mountain (By Strategy) for only $6.75!! I was overjoyed, even though I had barely heard of it. I bought it. And when I got home to listen to it, I thought it was the weirdest music I'd heard yet from Eno (having only heard Here Come the Warm Jets up to that point). But it gradually grew on me, and I still listen to it four years later.
I got this CD from my library, and copied it, along with Another Green
World, Before and After Science, and Wrong Way Up. Why did he have to
waste his talent? After this, it seems his music got worse and worse.
Music For Airports? Who does he think we are? Shitheads?
dang it, this guy Mark, I have Another Green World and Here Come The Warm Jets. I think to myself............. HMMMM, now all I need is Before And After Science.... then I'm done with this Eno guy. Turns out Mark likes Taking Tiger Mountain. Now I have to get it, even though he thinks Sticky Fingers is the best of the Rolling Stones, The White Album is the best of the Beatles, Born In The U.S.A. is the best of Bruce Springsteen, and Blood On The Tracks is the best of Bob Dylan, even through all this I know I have to get Taking Tiger Mountain, you know why? Because if Mark says it's great then there'll be some part of you that is saying the same thing or some part you that should be saying the same thing. I also just looked at some of my other comments...... I'm kind of an idiot, those are dumb. I give about half of those albums ratings that are good, like maybe a bull shark or oceanic whitetip, but Mark gives 'em all Mako sharks (I {everyone should} rate things in sharks now). One day I think........ hmmm.... maybe I'll get a Public Enemy cd...... I almost buy It Takes A Nation Of Millions To Hold Us Back, then I look to say what Mark says and he recommends some 91 Apocalypse thing that no one has heard of........ I think my life has just hit rock bottom.
i sat on this album for about a year before i decided to sit down with it. and i couldn't! it had me up and dancing! "third uncle" sounds like wire and it's so great i can't hardly when i hear of it. what a great album; so much fun; i feel dumbassy for not putting it on immediately: DON'T YOU MAKE THE SAME MISTAKE!!
Burning Airlines Give You So Much More is one of my favorite song titles. I'm even interested in seeing the opera Taking Tiger Mountain by Strategy because of Eno.
More like Another Great Album, if you ask the listener with ears named Me! But a conundrum has stricken me -- In fact, I'm torn.
Another Green World is an AWESOME album, one of my favourites ever. Every time I hear this album I go to other places and feel so peaceful and calm. My favourites are "Golden Hours", "The Big Ship" (with the awesome Fripp solo) and "Becalmed" but it means to be listened as a whole. Another cool moment is the very start of "Spirits Drifting", it always reminds me of ghosts and halloween nights! Best Eno album, hands down, and that's saying something. Great to listen to while watching the stars in the sky. 10/10
Good GOD, you're funny.
This is a 10 and probably the most listened-to of all the vintage albums I picked up this year. It would have been a 7 at first, though, and I think every review should come with a disclaimer noting that you probably won't understand what's so great about it right away. Some of them already do (like Christgau's, one of his better reviews--I guarantee you, no Christgau-puddery in that one) but some of it seems so simple, like, say, "Zawinul/Lava" for instance ("geez, four piano notes and some noise in the background"), that at first I put this one aside and didn't listen to closely.
You DO realize that it's Mistah Supahfresh Pimpzilla himself, PHIL MOTHERFUCKIN' COLLINS providing the "funky Krautrock groove drum action" on this bitch, right? Right?!
It might not be Brian's finest, but it's really, really good. The ambient pieces are all nice. "I'll come running to tie your shoe" - Hehe! "Spirits Drifting" is the scariest and emptiest song in my book. The record is worth your money for that song alone!
This might be my favorite Brian Eno album. While I LOVE "Taking Tiger Mountain..." because it's the exact kind of super-creative 70's pop David Bowie was never able to deliver, this record is just too beautiful. One of those few records I'm always in the mood to hear because--as a whole--it's so peaceful, calming, and lovely. I think "The Big Ship" has to be one of my favorite songs of all time, totally up there "Joy Ride" by Roxette and Trio's "Da Da Da."
I've got to say, this is my favorite Brian Eno album. Even though I
actively hate "I'll Come Running" (I find it annoying in it's
cutesy-ness), I love every other song on here. This one and Taking
Tiger Mountain are both where the earlier more rock stuff and later
more ambient stuff came together, and this one just comes out on top
for me. I did hear it before TTMBS, and have more memories with this,
so that might have something to do with it. The weird, flangey (or
something) guitar over bass and drums trading off actually playing the
beat on Sky Saw hooks me every time, and (as long as I skip the one
song that just doesn't do it for me), this is some great "driving
around in nature by yourself" music. It's just so individualistic
sounding, and everything sounds so lush... to my ears, he outsmarted
himself on his later work, but the ones before this were headed here.
Probably one of my favorite albums ever recorded. Everyone who likes
smart (but not cereberal, if that makes any sense) music would not be
wasting their time to listen to this. It's one of those weird,
interesting albums that actually is "all about the music". I won't
knock the guy for making a ton of money producing bands I don't like
and basically doing whatever the hell he wanted for most of his later
albums (they're just not my thing -good for him), but this one is
really special and it would have been great if he'd gone further with
this sound.
Albums like this make it clear why "Eno" is Latin for "Anus." This was Brian's first full-scale attempt at an ambient record, see. And I'm no fool who thinks that an ambient record is intended to be actively "listened to," so I turned it on and sat on the couch to read a fine book with pictures of naked people in it. At first, I was swept away by the lovely, relaxing tones of the 4 sustained piano notes repeating and looping over themselves in simple, pretty fashion. Unfortunately, they then continued for 30 minutes, changing only when two of the FOUR TOTAL NOTES dropped out for about 15 minutes in the middle. It put my wife to sleep, but it actively annoyed me. Why reduce the lovely four notes to a boring two? I thought the goal was to serve as a charming background pattern for my everyday life -- why was he trying to make me fall asleep? Was he planning to rob my home? Did he really think he was going to get past my ever-vigilant dog with that embarrassing bald head of his? Maybe that kind of crap works in sleepy old London towne but not here in the gritty, hardened Upper East Side of Manhattan, where the streets run red with the blood of the naive. We're HARD here. Don't come around messing wit -- oh no! The washing machine's off-balance! My frillies!
This is essentially Eno's first ambient album. The title track is very repetitive but calming, and acutally works as good background music if played very low. However, I think that 30 minutes is stretching it. 20 minutes would've been better. The next three tracks, variations on "Pachelbel's Canon in D", I find actually interesting to listen to and in the concept itself. 7/10
I'm gonna suggest that maybe you don't have any place reviewing music that you simply have no understanding of. If you have absolutely zero appreciation for ambient music then simply do not review ambient records. What I'm saying is just because people trust you to review Dinosaur Jr. records doesn't mean you have any place reviewing Bulgarian folk music, 16th century choral music or any other style that you simply don't have a fucking clue about.
Guitars. Where would we be without them? Would children still sing and
birds still play the lute? I don't think so. In fact, I don't think so at
all. No, not without guitars.
An acoustic guitar has a much smaller hole in the middle.
I don't want to put a d"AMP"er on
your fun, but not very many!
To get to the other sddddddddgj.
Who's there?
Sddddddddgj.
Sddddddddgj who?
Sddddddddgj Rkgddheigewifoj!
So I was on Jay Leno the other night promoting my hilarious new parody of Loverboy's "Workin' For The Weekend" (entitled "Everybody's Jerkin' Off The Milkman") when suddenly I realized, "Wait a minute. What am I doing here? I'm straight!" As I climbed off of him and slipped my gooey brown phallus back between my tight leather legs, I suddenly realized why I'm not as fond of Before And After Science as I am of Eno's first three non-ambient albums. It's a bit hard to explain in your human language, but I'll do my best with the limited vocabulary you have provided: Side one isn't very good.
I agree that side A isn't as mindblowing as side B, but that doesn't mean it isn't any great. I love "Backwater" and "King's Lead Hat". The other songs there are cool too, especially the rhythms, very similar to Talking Heads. As for the second side, it's pure bliss! My personal favourite is "By This River". It's so simple, yet as beautiful as a little white puppy! I love that piano line. "Julie With" is pure hypnotic atmosphere (Eno's forte, you see) and the other two songs are awesome as well. Even the underrated instrumental "Through Hollow Lands" is prime material, it's so beautiful and calm! My rating is a high 9!
Regarding the influence of the instrumentation/arrangements on the
Talking Heads, one should take note that "King's Lead Hat" is in fact
an anagram for Talking Heads. The road of influence is sometimes two
ways...
Bah. A pox on thee. This album is the best of the four Enos I've heard
(this, Taking Tiger Mountain by Shania Twain, Another Envious World, and Here
Come the Women Peeing, can you tell I'm incredibly sleep=deprived) and it
bundles all that's good about him into one package. I think he IS a good
funkster, albeit not a black one, and "King's Lead Hat" is nothing more than
a parody (and an anagram) of the Talking Heads. So it's not MEANT to be good-
time rock and/or roll. Notice Eno sounds exactly like David Byrne on that
track. Hil-arious.
Before and After Science just might be my favourite Eno record. I first listened to it when I borrowed the LP from my Uncle about 4 or 5 years ago. "No One Recieving" reminds me of "Sky Saw" on Another Green World. "Backwater" is such a catchy, fun song. "Kurt's Rejoiner" is just weird, with its off-kilter rhythm by occasionally phased drums and nonsensical lyrics. "Energy Fools the Magician" is one of my very favourite short Eno instrumentals (i think it should've been on Side Two). "King's Lead Hat" is just wacky, and fun.
I think, having started with a "review" of my fave, "Before and After
Science," that I'll waste time reading no further. Not because the
writer doesn't like the album as much as I do, but because any insight
he might offer is buried amid such a juvenile, self-indulgent writing
style that offers no respect to the reader.
Everybody loves an airport; 'tis no shame to admit it. In fact, ‘tis a crime to NOT admit it, and you will be taken to jail. However, one thing that most of us in these United Snakes of Captivity can agree upon is that Brian Eno doesn't understand bo diddley about the common man.
Don't wait - see a doctor now. It might be skin cancer. I'm not
kidding. Good luck.
You're right, the evocative song titles Eno
chose for Music for Airports rank right up
there with "Baby's On Fire" and "Dead Finks
Don't Talk." Or perhaps I misunderstood your
point. But what did I expect on an album with
a title, Ambient 1, that sounds like a prescription
sleep aid?
hmm... first, sorry for my bad english.
let's say that there are lots of muslim bullshit mp3's ...
but... you are in America,right ? And if you are in America, go to a Richard
Hagopian & Kef Time concert.
It is possible that ypu'll change your opinion about that 'muslin bullshit'
As America's leading and most popular author and historian, people constantly ask me, "Mark, what is your favorite film?" Well, the truth is that I don't have a favorite film. Unlike a record album, I consider a film to be one of those things you watch once and then forget about, like an old shoe or a wedding anniversary. However, of all the movies I've seen -- and I just watched Seven Doors Of Death last night, so I do stay current - not a single one of them features a track from this album. Why is this? Am I simply a stick in the mud? Am I like the proverbial water that only flows in one direction instead of flowing all over the place and flooding peoples' homes? Possibly, yes. But even more so than that, I'm like the old joke: Knock Knock. Who's there? Tennis. Tennis who? Tennis E. Williams!
I just read you watched seven doors of death (which is the same movie as the
Beyond, I believe). Well, you need to check out the following films:
Dead Alive (the goriest movie of all time, no joke)
MANIAC
New York Ripper
To be honest, Eno doesn't do much of anything on this album; it's really just Peter Sinfield reciting some nerdy sci-fi story he wrote while living in his parents' basement and jurkin off to naked cartoon characters. Eno's contributions are limited to atmospheric electronic drones, synthesizer bird noises, and bringing over some Dorito's for Peter Sinfield to munch on while watching Mystery Science Theater 3000.
Harold Budd is a gentle man with a piano made of feathers. His supple, birdlike hands touch the velvety keys with a grace and subtlety unknown to such hamfisted mediocrities as Joel Billy and John Elton. By partnering with electronics supervisor Brian Eno, he helped bring forth into this, the world, 40 minutes of the most delectably teasing piano motifs since -
I've been all around this great big wide open world, but let's not kid ourselves:I'm not exactly "Bill Trumpet" if you know what I mean. So here's Bill Trumpet to tell you about this album.
Bill Trumpet
Vice President, Trumpet Division
Trumpet Industries
A Subsidiary of Trumpet & Trumpet, Inc.
by "Manly Mark" Prindle "The Man"
I've got an Adam's apple, yeah yeah yeah
I also have a ballsac, yeah yeah yeah
Hanging right above my Adam's apple, yeah yeah yeah
I'm an attractive man with testicles on my chin, yeah yeah yeah
This morning I cut myself shaving and sperm flew everywhere yeah yeah yeah
Also, instead of toes, I have five penises on each foot yeah yeah yeah
If I were hilarious, I'd call myself a "Cock-Toe Twin" yeah yeah yeah
Last month I had a terrible case of Athlete's Penis yeah yeah yeah
And I can't play Footsie without getting somebody pregnant yeah yeah yeah
(*tap dance solo*)
That made my penises hurt yeah yeah yeah
One could argue that an album written and performed entirely by a man named Laraaji doesn't necessarily belong on a page of compact yet infotastic Brian Eno record reviews. But the day that Mr. Eno decided to give his latest production the subtitle Ambient 3, its fate as an "Eno" project was sealed. A modern analogy might be Peter Cetera producing a hot new band called "Larry's Jockstrap" and choosing to title their debut LP Chicago XXVIII: Hey! How's It Going? by Larry's Jockstrap. No no - or better yet, here's a better one. It would be like Andrew Maynard Keenan producing a new artist and then titling the album Another Self-Important Piece Of Crap, thus ensuring that the record would INEXTRICABLY be linked to Tool for the rest of mantime!
Oh holy shits, I just had one hellama idea for a new situation comedy for the television. Picture this: Moonlighting-meets-The Jeffersons -- the year is 2005, George W. has been assassinated and Dick Cheney owns a bakery in Hollywood. But get this - the KICKER - George W.'s ghost hangs around the bakery, getting Dick in all sorts of crazy shenanigans!!! I may just be dreaming Dixie, but My Life With The Ghost Of Bush (Starring David Byrne) could be exACTly what the Empty-Vee Degeneration is after!
that bit about laswell and jones re; avantgarde music was Hilarious....fucking Brain Drain......ha
I bought and listened to this on the strength of its
repeated comparisons with Peter Gabriel's magisterial
'Passion' album. I quickly concluded that whoever made
these comparisons was an incorrigible fool; where the
latter is beautiful, melodic, ecstatic and
fantastically powerful, the former is a crabbed,
hampered one-trick pony of a record which does the
same repeated sample/rhythmic hook thing on each and
every track, none of which differentiates itself
significantly from any other.
Thought i'd write a little about the exclusion of the track "Q'raan" on later issues of this album.
Let's sing a little bit before we start the review. "It's not unusual! To be loved by anyone. Da da da da da It's not unusual! To have fun with anyone... Da da da dee.... Put another nickle in! In the nickelodeon! All I want is loving you and music music music!.... I've paid my dues - blink bink bink ba ba - Time after time - blink bink bink ba ba - I've done my sentence - Chicago! Chicago! That toddlin' town, that toddlin' town. Chicago! Chicago! Let me show you around, let me show you around - Shine sweet freedom. Shine right on me. Go keep the spirit alive! All night long! -- 'Cause he was born! Born to be alive! (Born to be alive) Yes, he was born! Born! Born! DOOOOOZHHH!!!! (Born to be alive). Alright, I'm all songed out, let's review an album with no songs on it.
Looking at reviews on the net of this record, I seem to be one of the few Eno fans who does not like this album. As well, lots of critics call this (one of) his best ambient albums (along with Ambient 1).
It took me a while to "get" this album, but once I had, I was sold. It reminds me of my childhood ("awwwwww. . . "), the drone of the highway off in the distance, surrounded by crickets and tree frogs, cool night air, somnolence. If you are bored, don't give up, eventually you'll get it. Put it on some day when you're exhausted and dont have the energy to listen, put it on quietly, imperceptibley, don't pay attention.
Wouldn't it be crazy to float through space? Can you imagine the giddy sensation of flying through the universe, sitting on a crazyass tilted ball that twists around and around while circling the sun at 67,000 miles an hour? Unfortunately, most of us will never live this dream and will wither away our sad days stuck here on the desolate flat bottom of the world as space taunts us just overhead. Curses on you, you fucking gravity asshole!
One clever reviewer sumed this one up thus:
Brian Eno actually explained the whole country music aspect of this album in a 1990 interview with Mark Pendergast in Sound on Sound magazine:
Hey, look what I bought with my birthday money:
The Music Of Yes: Structure and Vision in Progressive Rock
Flying Colours: The Jethro Tull Reference Manual
Slimetime: A Guide to Sleazy, Mindless Movies
Critical Vision: The Best of Early Headpress
Eyeball Compendium (horror/sex movie guide)
Hawkwind: Sonic Assassins
- box set of Italian cannibal movies: Cannibal Holocaust, Slave of the Cannibal God, Eaten Alive, Jungle Holocaust
- 6 sleazy hard-to-find weird porn and sexploitation/horror movies from a bootlegger site: the Perverse Desires of Emanuelle, The Defiance of Good, Schoolgirls in Chains, A Quiet Place to Kill, The Girl in Room 2A, The Debauchers
- '70s horror-porn movie Hardgore
- several Something Weird sexploitation double-features (mondo bizarro/mondo freudo, the bloody the beautiful and the bare/behind closed doors, wide wide world of jayne mansfield/labyrinth of sex, the ghastly ones/seeds of sin, angels/getting into heaven)
- Something Weird's 'Sexy Storybook Collection' box set, featuring The Erotic Adventures of Zorro, Trader Hornee, The Adult Version of Jekyll & Hyde, Sinderella And The Golden Bra, Goldilocks And The Three Bares, The Notorious Daughter of Fanny Hill, and The Head Mistress
- Yesspeak: 2 1/2 hour documentary of YES
- My Friends Need Killing
- Eskimo Nell (according to the two books I've read on the subject, this is one of the very few honestly GOOD British sex comedies of the "sex comedy" era)
- The Cheerleaders Collection: box set featuring three sleazy 70s movies - one of which stars David Hasselhoff! - The Cheerleaders, Revenge of the Cheerleaders and The Swingin' Cheerleaders
- Retro-Seduction Cinema double-feature: The Naughty Stewardesses and Blazing Stewardesses (the latter of which is apparently a take-off on Blazing Saddles)
- The Resurrecting or whatever it's called
the two CDs I don't already own by The Punkles, a fantastic band that plays Beatles songs Ramones-style
Easy Alice
Fast Penelope Edith Anne Edwina Mae Esther Gladwyn Irene
Gonorrhea Stacie
Tight Dave The Girl
Jane Doe (Deceased)
I do have certain issues with ambient music. My main concern is Eno's supposed belief (I've never met the guy, so all of my facts about him are about 50th-hand, assuming that if you add up all the people in the world, then there will be a total of at least 50 hands - otherwise why go on? Why bother trying to live day-by-day pretending everything's fine when the truth is that the entire human race only has 245 fingers -- IF THAT???) that ambient music is meant to be akin to a visual artwork in a room: it's there, you don't really notice it but it adds a bit of culture and you can observe it more closely if the mood suits you.
This album is kind of pretty and relaxing but it sure doesn't have to be 61 minutes. In my opinion, it should have been released as a 10-minute EP so if you wanted to hear the same exact thing for much more time, you could simply press the 'repeat' button on your hi-fi to keep it going. That would be a nice idea, wouldn't be?
He wrote it for a movie (which itself was a series of
paintings or something), so I'm guessing it had to be 61
minutes. Also, it was exclusively written for compact disc,
and he was having some sort of a wank about not being able
to have an uninterrupted 61-minute track on any other medium.
Being a John Ford style morally ambiguous but utterly independent rebel, this is crazily my favourite Eno album - I think it's bordering on genius. See, all that hog in the sleevenotes about it being like a painting in that it can repay closer examination, is, like, true.
Was just perusing your reviews again, and saw your
one-star review of Brian Eno's "Thursday Afternoon."
Gave me a good chuckle!
Oh, how the stars were in Shakespearean alignment on that special night when haughty intelligent genius John Cale met up with theoretical high-minded experimentalist Brian Eno. Anyone viewing the magical moment when these two shining brilliant forces of brainpower put palm to palm outside a Westchester Denny's would no doubt have witnessed gallon upon gallon of a strange, liquidy, lumpy fluid pour out of each man's ears and onto the parking lot.
Sterno Log truly 'ARRIVED' in '92, hopping aboard the Youth House Music Train with his action-packed sweaty dance pounder "Fractal Zoom," which begins this CD on an imposingly up-to-date tone that will have you turning your cap backwards, wearing really big pants, and announcing "Yeah, THAT'S what I'm talkin' about!" even though you weren't actually talking about anything at all.
good to see you reviewing brian eno. how come there are not many comments on mr.avantgarde man? anyway the oscars suck cock! I am waiting to see the movie ray! fuck 2004! grammy assholes! anyway back to eno. nerve net is odd. ray charles rules!!!!!!!!!! old skool synth beats and drum machines that sound like every last new wave band! rico suave!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! jazz up jazz down dumbass!
Hello. My name is Mark Prindle, and I've been hiding a secret deep inside me for far too long now. A secret I can't deny, and one that I now must bring forth in a moment of unheralded honesty:
I haven't heard this album much, as it's a pain in the ass to listen in the whole, but I just want to say something you may not know: This album title is a tribute to the popular (or not so popular) Russian painter Shutov, who used to paint while listening to Eno.
You don't have to make photocopies of my credit cards to realize that I'm not exactly "Bob Spiritual." I don't meditate, don't do yoga, don't practice tai chi or pilates, don't search for my "spiritual center," don't drink tea, don't use peyote in search of the inner truth, don't read philosophy, don't practice Buddhism, don't worship God, don't put dots on my forehead, don't commune with nature, don't take religious journeys into the desert with my Maharishi, don't sing "Hare Hare," don't practice tantric sex, don't do any of that crap. As such, I am probably the least likely person in these Native American States of Tribal Groupings to find anything worthwhile about a 57-minute CD with five different notes on it.
HAY! You'll love this idea I just had while taking a diarrhea, because we all love games together. I was just remembering this one time where I was cruising the Internet Superhighway in my car and I ran across a "Mad Lib" record review. In other words, some guy had put together a hilarious record review where you, the reader, would insert your own "adjectives," "nouns," "verbs," etc. to create an uproarious record review for any occasion. And I thought that since I get more readers than any other web site in the world, you might appreciate having the chance to recreate this goodtime extravaganza that I once enjoyed so thoroughly. So here - let's do it! Together!
By Mark Prindle -- and YOU!
Answer: Because he was a hunt-and-pecker! (a-huntin' pecker)(!)
First man: "Jah Wobble?"
Second man: "Yes, but only because I was drunk and rotund."
In 1996, Brian Eno published a diary containing his thoughts and meditations of
the previous year. Included in this book was a 29-minute CD featuring six songs
recorded between April and September of that year. We now present for you a few
highlights from this celebrated book release.
In a white cube! With black curtains. At the station. She said no strings! Purple starlight. Goodbye windows. I wait in this place, where the sun -- HEY! I just realized something fantasticmagorial! I actually just watched a movie called "Cube" the other night! It was neet and starred that guy from "Pin." The script was kinda stupid, but I think the whole thing was meant as a metaphor, so it's okay to be stupid, like the Bible. Which reminds me of a little joke:
Speaker 2: Who's there?
Speaker 1: The Bible!
Speaker 2: The Bible who?
Speaker 1: The Bible (Bi- Bull) has sex with both cows and other bulls!
Speaker 2: Ha ha!
Speaker 1: Yeah, I know! Ha ha!
Speaker 2: Ha ha!
If it's not too darn hot, I'd like to pitch the woo with you regarding Brian Eno's The Drop CD. But before I do so, people need to stop using these clichéd spellings in their record reviews: "elpee," "rawks," "yr" and "stoopid." Nobody likes those spellings. Just stop using them.
I don't mean to brag here, but.... I, in fact, dormienti as well. And have done so for, oh jeez... 5, 6 years? Yeah, it's a cold day in June when you can't find Ol' Prind out there dormientiing all over town, shamelessly, belligerently. But we're not here to talk about my personal whims and anecdotes. The idea that I'm trying to convey is that music -- even really ghastly music such as that produced by the great Brian Eno every year since 1984 -- deserves to be described in verbal text, for young people to view with their eyes and nose before using their hands to pull their wallets from their legs and spend money with their elbows on CDs that aren't worth their weight in $1,000,000,000 bills. And for that you should be proud of me, America. I'm here to save you money. Whether you're a blue-collar worker saving $16 you could have blown on Kite Stories or a multinational corporation saving hundreds of thousands of dollars that you were planning to spend on copies of Neroli for all your employees, it can hardly be debated (though it is, in Senate, constantly) that I am here to provide a public service. And if that public service upsets some people or causes others to accuse me of homophobic racist alcoholism, well that's simply proof positive that my readers are gay black teetotalers, and that's GOOD! I'm doing this site for the cause of diversity and would be horrified to learn that most of my audience is in fact made up of those fucking white pricks. And don't even get me STARTED on those jerks that screw women if they're men, and men if they're women. Assholes!
Say! You're a political. Here then to enjoy for you is my interpretation of the Kerry/Bush media arguments:
Bush: You're a flip-flopper!
Kerry: I know I voted for us to go into Iraq, but that's different than being the president and deciding to do that.
Bush: Keep flip-floppin', Mr. Flip-Flop!
Kerry: I definitely would have gotten rid of Saddam Hussein, because he's a terrible dictator. But I never would have gone into Iraq, nor tried to depose Saddam Hussein.
Bush: Say, what's that on my foot? Oh! It's a flip-flop!
Kerry: Bush is incapable of getting us out of Iraq. I have a four-pronged plan to get us out: the prongs are obvious, simplistic and unattainable, but I was in Vietnam.
Bush: Ha ha! Look everybody! It's a flip-flopper!
Kerry: Everything in America is bad because of Bush. Everything would be good under me. Because of my ideas and what-have-you.
Bush: You should open a store called "Kerry's Flip-Flop Store!"
Kerry: I went to Vietnam. Bush got a cozy whirl-de-doo.
Bush: Flip Wilson? No! Flip FLOP!
MENU
So I was lying under the table licking my penis the other day when my Dad suddenly put on this CD that sounded identical to Music for Civic Recovery Centre but with a really loud BUZZZ BUZZZZ BUZZZ on top. I'm usually pretty good at ignoring his music and continuing to lick my penis, but this stuff pierced my brain so badly that I started crying. Daddy came over and tried to comfort me, but with its booming bass noises, high-pitched electronics and that incessant BUZZZZ BUZZZZZ BUZZZZ, Compact Forest Proposal hurt my ears more than that little guy across the hall I'm always yelling at because he never shuts up.
Henry The Dog
Henry,
Marty McFly
Trip-hop and smooth jazz - so close yet so foolishly mistaken for far. Eno and his DJ pal Peter Schwalm eliminate that line, creating the night-timiest Portishead/"on hold music" convergence since the DJ Spooky/Gino Vanelli split-cassingle released to so much enjoyment and hilarity so many years ago (in Canada). Hi! I'm Bob. Bob Tranquilizer Dart. You know, when I'm out tranquilizing somebody with my tranguilizer-shaped head, I always keep Eno in my Ghetto Blaster. Not only does he
The dinging and the clinging of the bells, bells, bells, bells, bells, bells, bells. The cranging and the schlanging of the bells, bells, bells, bells, bells, bells, bells. The clucking and the assfucking of the bells, bells, bells, bells, belsssl
Captain's Log, Stardate 11233.1445
I was burning some sienna the other day when it suddenly occurred to me
that not enough people refer to trucks as "Trucky." It simply boggles the
mind that this cute-as-a-button moniker is so seldom employed in reference
to a 40-ton piece of machinery. Can you imagine what an adorable world in
which we would live in if only people would refer to trucks as "Trucky"?
Here, I've written a short psycho-drama to illustrate:
Dave: "Oh, you mean Trucky? He's a sweetie."
(*Trucky rolls up, sniffs Steve's hand and wags his back wheels*)
The Ener's back! With his first good album since 1983! Mr. Eno finally at long, long, LOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOONG last decided to attempt a return to the space-age synth blurbly gentle poptone songs (with lyrics!) of his early solo work. And as they say in Football, "He shoots he scores!"
Dear Fans in Columbus,
Please give me a few days to figure out a way to make it up to you. I
haven't let you down before and I wont let you down now. Until you hear
from me again remember, You are the sun. I am the moon. You are the
words. I am the tune. Forgive me. I love you. Prind.
I liked the "thrown at a Mexican" and "eat a magazine" lines, dammit! You don't have to revise your old reviews. You can't please everybody, Prindal!
If i can sum up you reviews in a statement i would say "objective lighthearted tomfoolery". I read your cite specifically because your reviews are not entirely up their own ass (or is that your ass??) like the many other magazines that rate music these days ....pitchfork....how the hell do you rate music on a 100 point scale....was the tom drum off a beat on the 43rd measure....oh better drop a point off. So in closing i would say dont let the assholes in the world get to you, they are only trying to make you feel as miserable as they feel themselves, and keep up the yuck yucks.
I really liked My Life In The Bush Of Ghosts. Especially when I was a 22
year old semi-brat. It's still cool now.
Hay how's it going. I'm a guy who posts responses to online news articles,
and Mark Prindle asked if I would review this new Brian Eno album for
him. Of course I would. I love posting responses on the Internet.
A: Because it was do for a good washing!
A: typical liberal cesspool activities.IF YOU WANT TO KEEP THE TREES
PURCHASE THE LAND. DON'T STEAL IT THROUGH EMINATE DOMANE, PURCHASE IT!!!
FOR FAIR MARKET VALUE . IF YOU CAN'T THEN SHUT UP. But to answer your
question, 4.
A: I don't know, but my 3D Toshiba Laptop worth $1599 just arrived. Only
paid $198.47 for it, I thought that was a good deal till my neighbor told
me he's getting a massive 42 inch 3DTV for $192.74 being delivered to his
apartment tomorrow. It's a really amazing feeling not paying full jacked up
prices like the public have-to. I even started selling products to staff at
work and I'm making a killing. Take a look here, go to GoGetBids.com.
Here's something I was discussing with a couple people earlier tonight, so if you were there, skip this paragraph. We were talking about supercomputers, and how the standard test for determining one's power is the number of decimal points to which it can solve Pi. And it got me to thinking... wouldn't it be hilarious if scientists pulled together all of the most powerful supercomputers in the world and set them to work on this task, only for the computers to ultimately conclude that Pi = 3 and the whole 'infinite decimals' thing was just a subtraction error? I'd totally laugh at autistic people and their bullshit.
In June 2010, Brian Eno visited lovely Mexico City and lay down himself an album of spacey sci-fi instrumentals. But somewhere between the cold tribal synth-prog of "Needle Click," minimalist Philip Glass sparkly tones of "Light Legs," Moon-based Spaghetti Western of "Flora and Fauna - Gleise 581d," Radiohead-styled piano love of "Vanadium" and heartwarming church organ space dust of "Delightful Universe (Seen From Above)," he (a) started throwing in really irritating noises, like the insistent delay clicking in "F&F; - G5," eardrum-shattering high-pitched buzzing near the end of "DU (SFA)" and gross descending pipe noise and jarring key combinations of "NM," and (b) decided to throw 15 minutes of ambient BULLSHIT in the middle. The result is my penis.
Drums Between the Bells was intended as a one-off, but after it sold 220 million copies and won all those Grammies, it was just a matter of time before "Bri-Ri" hit the studios for a follow-up -- especially since they were no longer the only meditation-ambience-and-poetry act around, thanks to Sweden's brutal new crop of Death Calm-And-Poesy bands (Robert Frostrangulation, Spawn of Alexander Popesession, Edna St. Vincent Mithotyn, etc). But it all sounds completely calculated and methodical, because
poets are only in it for the massive amounts of money they earn every time they write a poem. Brian Eno used to mean it when he played two notes for five years, but now he's just following the green all the way down Gold Street to the silver bank with the copper at the door. But I'm a record reviewer critic, so let's get on to chops and burgers.
Because I spat it at some asshole asking me to write a record review.
I don't know, but they'll have to do it without me. I'm sick of this shit.
Because seven fucked 82 up the ass.
Losers.