Brian Eno is MORE DARK THAN SHARK

INTERVIEWS, REVIEWS & RELATED ARTICLES

Mojo AUGUST 2011 - by Mike Barnes

BRIAN ENO: DRUMS BETWEEN THE BELLS

A music and text project that began back in 2003 with poet Rick Holland.

Eno's second Warp release features recitations by himself and guest performers in musical settings, an approach he first used with Aylie Cooke's chilling delivery of Bone Bomb on 2005's Another Day On Earth. Here Cooke reads The Airman as if up in the blue, leaving Eno's aqueous sonic currents eddying below but she has to fight against the chattering metallic clatter on Sounds Alien. This is typical of the problems inherent in this approach. In louder and busier sections it's easy to lose the text and there's no melody as consolation. Eno delivers one of the highlights with a surprisingly soulful sung performance on the sombre Breath Of Crows. But on Pour lt Out, while Eno plays a restrained, stately tune, Laura Spagnuolo's soft-toned, image-rich musings on marine molluscs and haemoglobin are subsumed into the music.