INTERVIEWS, REVIEWS & RELATED ARTICLES
New Musical Express NOVEMBER 9, 2012 - by Lucy Jones
BRIAN ENO: LUX
Take the piss out of ex-Roxy Music man Brian Eno all you want - "He's the Nick Clegg of the music world... an empty vessel", Manic Street Preachers' James Dean Bradfield once quipped - but there's no denying his ability to chill you the hell out. Take his umpteenth solo album and third for Warp, which sees the David Bowie, Devo, Talking Heads and U2 producer doing what he does best: creating ambient music with the power to subtly shift your mood. Lux pulses and phases, barely changing key or dynamic throughout its seventy-five minutes. There's a warmth and richness to it that was lacking from some of his previous ambient works, such as 1978's chilly, icicle-sharp Music For Films. The detail of individual tracks is almost irrelevant, as the album drifts from sunrise strings to rise-and-fall synths to piano notes as delicate as foals taking their first steps. But it creates an undeniably compelling whole. And all this despite the sixty-four-year-old's own definition of ambient music as sound that's easy to ignore.
ALBUMS | BIOGRAPHY | BOOKS | INSTALLATIONS | INTERVIEWS | LYRICS | MULTIMEDIA
