01 Dec Brian Eno – Small Craft on a Milk Sea
Undulating, padded guitars and hints of echoing percussion lull the listener into thinking that this may be another album in the mold of Eno’s Music for Films. Nice. Then abruptly the songs take on the seeming structures of rock and pop from his Here Come the Warm Jets period. Yes! But, that was just another feint in a different direction, as the “songs” take on a lovely and spaced-out electronic/trance shape. But, what’s this? Raw electric guitar slicing through on “2 Forms of Anger”. Yet, as one would expect from the man who brought African rhythms and song structure to pop music via the Talking Heads and his collaborations with David Byrne and others, it still doesn’t sound like traditional Western music. The rhythms are trance-inducing and the melody is almost completely ethereal.
Each subsequent track is like an exploratory scouting party, moving forward, and then just when you get comfortable, the tones and style shift direction. “Dust Shuffle” locks into a nice groove that is here and gone in just under two minutes! The remainder of the album is made up of soundscapes much like the beginning that sound like no place on this planet. Rumbling tones reverberate with a sense of loneliness, while muted piano and percussion treatments echo in-and-out of the Abstract Expressionist sound paintings — familiar to fans of Eno, yet welcome and beautiful as new works of art from a master of the form.
Smells like: 8/10
