Brian Eno - Before And After Science (1977)

For his last in a run of art-rock-based albums in the 1970s, Eno assembled the cream of the musicians he'd worked with thus far (including members of Roxy Music, Brand X and Cluster - I ran out of space in the tags to list every name), and recorded over a hundred possible tracks over two years.  This was whittled down to ten that were a summation of the quirky avant-pop/rock sound he'd established, and also looked forward to his increasingly ambient interests.

Overlapping in part with the time Eno spent with Bowie in Berlin, Before And After Science plays well against Low & Heroes, not least on King's Lead Hat (also anagrammatic of future collaborators), and has several krautrock touch points too.  The lyrics on opener No One Receiving look forwards to The Belldog on After The Heat, and Moebius & Roedelius themselves appear on By This River, giving definitive Cluster & Eno overlap.  Another krautrock guest appearance comes in the form of Jaki Liebezeit's drumming on Backwater.

Energy Fools The Magician aside, the original LP's two sides divide neatly into an uptempo, jagged art-rock side and a sublime pastoral side.  As good as the former is, the latter takes the crown for me in Eno's 70s output: the lovely Here He Comes; the bucolic-melancholic Julie With; the aforementioned Cluster co-write; an ambient instrumental aptly dedicated to Harold Budd, and the gorgeous closer Spider & I (thought by some to be about Bowie).  Outside of his purely ambient work, Eno really doesn't get better than this.

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pw: sgtg

Previously posted at SGTG:
Another Green World
Cluster & Eno 

After The Heat
Ambient 2: The Plateaux Of Mirror (with Harold Budd)

Ambient 4: On Land
Apollo - Atmospheres & Soundtracks (with Daniel Lanois & Roger Eno)
The Pearl (with Harold Budd & Daniel Lanois)

Various Artists - A Brief History Of Ambient, Volume 1 (1993 compilation)

First charity shop rummage of the new year turned up this double-CD mix released by Virgin Records, which as the title suggests ran to a short series.  I vaguely remember these coming out, but despite my curiosity they'd have been too heavy an investment for me at the time: this one that I've just paid two quid for still has its Tower Records price sticker of £15.49, and that's pretty reasonable for a double set of 70+ minute discs back then, IIRC!

Everything here is naturally from artists licensed to Virgin, which gives a handy reminder of what canny risk-takers Branson & co were back in the 70s through to mid-80s.  Even into the 90s to an extent - oddly, Hillage/System 7 are conspicuous by their absence for whatever reason (of course, the Point 3 albums hadn't been released yet in '93).  Just take a look at the artist list in the labels below - and I couldn't fit them all in, ran out of space.

Good track choices too (can never say no to a good chunk of Tangerine Dream's Phaedra); full tracklist is here, along with info on an early mispress that led to the mastering cues for Disc 1 being inadvertently used again for Disc 2, the latter ending up with its track divisions all over the shop.  The copy I've just bought is actually one of those - I've re-sequenced Disc 2 now.  So here's a brief history of (Virgin) ambient, with some inevitable classics, and a few (for me) new surprises: loved the remix of early Killing Joke that sounds like an update of the first two Neu! albums, to name just one.

links:
Disc 1
Disc 2
pw: sgtg


extra Phaedra...

As a postscript, for anyone who doesn't have Tangerine Dream's 1974 debut for Virgin that catapulted them to stardom with an interstellar, gaseous mix of Moog, Mellotron and flute - grab the full album below.  Was nice to see it featured in the recent Black Mirror episode, along with a faithful recreation of the WH Smith shopfronts that I remember from my childhood.

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pw: sgtg

Brian Eno - Another Green World (1975)

Sitting at the crossroads between Eno's earliest art rock offerings and this first ambient explorations,  Another Green World always makes me smile.  There's still a handful of his off-kilter pop songs scattered throughout, with random sung syllables developed into nonsense (but weirdly charming) lyrics.  For the most part, however, this album is composed of gorgeous proto-ambient minatures that prefigure Eno's work with Cluster/Harmonia.  Eno's guitar playing, with that long sustain from all his unique experiments, is possibly my favourite aspect of this album.  Listen to the all-too-brief title track for example, then think of Michael Rother's guitar style in the late 70s - wonder who was really influencing who?

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