The Essential… Brian Eno

09: BRIAN ENO WITH DANIEL LANOIS & ROGER ENO
APOLLO: ATMOSPHERES AND SOUNDTRACKS
(EG, 1983)

This pristine record is one of the best examples of the more electronic, Daniel Lanois-enabled sound that would come to characterise Eno’s work for the rest of the 80s. Is there a track ever made that’s more suggestive of alien contact than ‘Signals’? ‘An Ending (Ascent)’ is the most straightforwardly euphoric ambient work that Eno ever sculpted (though typically there’s an undertow of melancholy), its rising, stately chords still rinsed to death by movie and TV soundtrackers looking to connote resolution and rebirth, and frequently strapped to dirt-cheap 4/4 beats by two-bit trance producers. ‘Deep Blue Day’ is the stand-out track: a curious meshing of sci-fi synths and down-home slide guitar that brings to light the old-fashioned frontierist mentality at the heart of the NASA space programme.

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This entry was posted on Thursday, August 5th, 2010 at 4:39 pm and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.

  • Adfih

    it's BLACKwater.

  • username7410

    What the hell? No space for 'Here Comes The Warm Jets'? …think I might not even bother to read the list.

  • ae

    no adfih, it's definitely 'backwater'

  • http://twitter.com/GeraldEmerald Gerald Emerald

    True the name is 'backwater' but I'm sure the lyric is 'black water', but I guess that's beside the point and you win Sir!

  • Telstar777

    Agreed. This article wastes my time by not including Tiger Mountain and Warm Jets. And since the writer went to so much trouble to include other collaborations, might as well throw For Your Pleasure and the first Roxy lp in there too.

  • Tom Lea

    it’s not a blog, Dames.

  • dames

    'spotify'? 'Proto techno'? Internet wanker.

  • dames

    totally!!! How can you leave out some of the main Eno albums in the larger context of… main Eno albums? totally wtf. Note he doesn't even unitalicise the 'and' between the album titles in his haste for blogging glory…

  • malco49

    how can one NOT include an artist's crowning achievement? no taking tiger mountain(by strategy) ? like user7410 i might not even read the list

  • Jckiley

    Kiran = dilrod

  • Arturo_Ulises

    This is far from essential.

  • Fasf

    this list is great, i would make it like this,
    all essentials are her..GOOD WORK! thanks

  • Ian

    Umm, how about the first two Roxy Music albums, and Warm Jets and Tiger Mountain? I’m pretty sure these are more essential than some of the ambient work.

  • Paul Delvecchio

    There’s rarely bad Eno, and all these albums are great, but I like the ordering on this list a bit better. http://echoesblog.wordpress.com/2009/10/26/brian-eno-1-icon-of-echoes/

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