Album: Another Green World
Artist: Brian Eno
Born: Woodbridge, Suffolk
Released: September 1975
Genre: Ambient
Influenced: David Bowie, Talking Heads, U2, Depeche Mode, LCD Soundsystem
When you hear people talk of musicians creating soundscapes, it's easy to see that as a cliché, but with Brian Eno that is exactly what he set out to achieve. Another Green World marks the transition point in his musical development from ex-Roxy Music art rocker to highly influential ambient pioneer. Taking the album title quite literally, the fourteen songs (nine of which have no lyrics) of Another Green World appear to conjure up an imaginary landscape, a planet somewhat like Earth but unreal at the same time. The opening three tracks, Sky Saw, Over Fire Island and St. Elmo’s Fire, give a sense of floating above a new unknown territory. Eno's music has a very different feel to the sci-fi and Tolkien juvenilia found in much prog rock; here the mood is more austere and the approach minimal. One guest musician on the album is King Crimon's Robert Fripp, whose unique guitar playing lights up St. Elmo's Fire.
In Dark Trees and The Big Ship both have a greater sense of rhythm, as though we've now landed in this imaginary landscape and are being propelled through it. The sinister feel of In Dark Trees is mesmerising and I can hear echoes of this sound in The Cure and Massive Attack, while the grand sweep of The Big Ship appears to be the basis for the entire works of Sigur Ros. Brian Eno was probably more influential than any other musician to emerge in the 70s, you can see his sonic tentacles spread everywhere. I'll Come Running is another conventional interlude before we get to explore this new planet's flora & fauna on Sombre Reptiles and Little Fishes. Golden Hours again breaks the flow, as it traces the protagonist's descent into confusion or insanity ("who would believe what a poor set of eyes can show you"). By the end of the record, the music has begun to drift and dissolve, with the song titles (Becalmed, Everything Merges With The Night and Spirits Drifting) evoking an ecstatic ascension away from the planet and back to the stars. East Anglia's greatest musical son really went far beyond the known musical world with this album and his voyage would inspire generations to come.
When you hear people talk of musicians creating soundscapes, it's easy to see that as a cliché, but with Brian Eno that is exactly what he set out to achieve. Another Green World marks the transition point in his musical development from ex-Roxy Music art rocker to highly influential ambient pioneer. Taking the album title quite literally, the fourteen songs (nine of which have no lyrics) of Another Green World appear to conjure up an imaginary landscape, a planet somewhat like Earth but unreal at the same time. The opening three tracks, Sky Saw, Over Fire Island and St. Elmo’s Fire, give a sense of floating above a new unknown territory. Eno's music has a very different feel to the sci-fi and Tolkien juvenilia found in much prog rock; here the mood is more austere and the approach minimal. One guest musician on the album is King Crimon's Robert Fripp, whose unique guitar playing lights up St. Elmo's Fire.
In Dark Trees and The Big Ship both have a greater sense of rhythm, as though we've now landed in this imaginary landscape and are being propelled through it. The sinister feel of In Dark Trees is mesmerising and I can hear echoes of this sound in The Cure and Massive Attack, while the grand sweep of The Big Ship appears to be the basis for the entire works of Sigur Ros. Brian Eno was probably more influential than any other musician to emerge in the 70s, you can see his sonic tentacles spread everywhere. I'll Come Running is another conventional interlude before we get to explore this new planet's flora & fauna on Sombre Reptiles and Little Fishes. Golden Hours again breaks the flow, as it traces the protagonist's descent into confusion or insanity ("who would believe what a poor set of eyes can show you"). By the end of the record, the music has begun to drift and dissolve, with the song titles (Becalmed, Everything Merges With The Night and Spirits Drifting) evoking an ecstatic ascension away from the planet and back to the stars. East Anglia's greatest musical son really went far beyond the known musical world with this album and his voyage would inspire generations to come.
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