Photo Credit: Shamil Tanna
Brian Eno, the Suffolk born musician/composer/producer/singer/visual artist, announced today that he will be releasing his new awaited album The Ship, via Warp Records, on April 29th, 2016. This is Eno’s first solo record since his 2012 Grammy-nominated album LUX, released in November of that year, and looks to be one of the artist’s most complex and interesting LP to date. This new technique of three dimensional recording and using it to form into two, interconnected parts, which provide the listener with a interesting sensation, as if it is a musical novel that is carried through, and yet still remains true to the traditional album feel. Resulting in some of Eno’s very best work, a record that stands above all the rest in his catalog.
Along with the release of the new LP, Eno has included a series of his own installations that will be happening around the world, where the listener will be able to hear alternative versions of the album in 3-dimensional. multi-channel sound installations.
“Humankind seems to teeter between hubris and paranoia: the hubris of our ever-growing power contrasts with the paranoia that we’re permanently and increasingly under threat. At the zenith we realise we have to come down again…we know that we have more than we deserve or can defend, so we become nervous. Somebody, something is going to take it all from us: that is the dread of the wealthy. Paranoia leads to defensiveness, and we all end up in the trenches facing each other across the mud.” – Brian Eno
Born in Suffolk after World War II, Eno had a relatively normal childhood, but while attending Winchester School of Arts he sat in on a lecture by Peter Townsend of The Who which he did not know was a catalyst for his music making career. During Townsend’s lecture about the use of tape machines by non-musicians, this was the moment where Eno realized he could make music even though he was not a musician at that point. So, as he went through his school days, he would figure out how to use a tape recorder as a musical instrument, experimenting with his earlier improvisational bands on using it during a set. From that point on it was a barrage of different bands and groups that Brian was able to showcase his talent and be able to produce his sound of music.
On his new album, Brian states “On a musical level, I wanted to make a record of songs that didn’t rely on the normal underpinnings of rhythmic structure and chord progressions but which allowed voices to exist in their own space and time, like events in a landscape. I wanted to place sonic events in a free, open space.” Getting his initial inspiration from The Titanic and the first world war, Eno Continues “One of the starting points was my fascination with the First World War, that extraordinary trans-cultural madness that arose out of a clash of hubris between empires. It followed immediately after the sinking of the Titanic, which to me is its analogue. The Titanic was the Unsinkable Ship, the apex of human technical power, set to be Man’s greatest triumph over nature. The First World War was the war of materiel, ‘over by Christmas’, set to be the triumph of Will and Steel over humanity. The catastrophic failure of each set the stage for a century of dramatic experiments with the relationships between humans and the worlds they make for themselves.”
Opening up the album with a 21-minute track, named after the LP’s title, “The Ship” on which sea-chants builds in ominous drama, with snatches of distant voices and creeping electronics, it is recommended that it should be listened to in a dark room in order to physically feel the endless sea. “Wave. After. Wave”.
The last track on the album is a Lou Reed penned cover of The Velvet Underground’s “I’m Set Free”, Eno famously credited this band as one of the main inspirations behind his early music he explored as an art student. Eno said “its [Lou Reed’s “I’m Set Free] implication that when we step out of our story we don’t step into ‘the truth’ – whatever that might be – but into another story.” Providing a fitting ending to the technically innovative cinematic suite.
“This album is a succession of interleaved stories. Some of them I know, some of them I’m discovering now in the making of them.”
Bringing together amazing songs with minimalist ambience, technical innovation, and physical electronics peppered in with some ominus narrative. The Ship‘s impact on the musical realm will be felt for a very long time, signifying a new cycle in the creative career of Brian Eno.
The Ship Tracklist:
1. The Ship
2. Fickle Sun (i) Fickle Sun (ii) The Hour is Thin (iii)
3. I’m Set Free
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