Brian Eno is MORE DARK THAN SHARK

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The Financial Times DECEMBER 9, 2017 - by Ludovic Hunter-Tilney

TOM ROGERSON WITH BRIAN ENO: FINDING SHORE - 'MUSIC WITH A HORIZONTAL FEEL'

The pianist makes an excursion into ambient pastorals, inspired by the Suffolk landscape, with producer Brian Eno

Tom Rogerson is a pianist who specialises in improvisation, with a mixed musical background including being taught by Harrison Birtwistle, a stint playing jazz in New York and membership of London experimental rock band Three Trapped Tigers.

In Finding Shore he makes an excursion into ambient pastorals, inspired by the Suffolk landscape and made with Brian Eno. Like the flatlands it evokes, the music has a horizontal feel, with gentle oscillations up and down the scale and drones shifting pitch like planes of light.

Eno's electronics are rigged up so as to be triggered by Rogerson's piano-playing. A chiming melody resembles jangling boat masts in Idea Of Order At Kyson Point - named after a coastal area - while sinister sounds loom like an oppressive weather front in Chain Home, with Rogerson's piano taking on the characteristics of an agitated Morse code signal.

The tracks manage to bring a variety moods of to the restricted dynamic space. Motion In Field is the liveliest, dominated by a warm synthesiser throb. Marsh Chorus lies at the other extreme, a shimmering landscape of church bells and birdsong.