Brian Eno is MORE DARK THAN SHARK

INTERVIEWS, REVIEWS & RELATED ARTICLES

Mojo OCTOBER 2009 - by Ian Harrison

HARMONIA & ENO '76: TRACKS AND TRACES

Once-lost document of Krautrockers/Eno collaboration, expanded.

Harmonia, a Kosmiche superband comprised of members of Neu! and Cluster, were so enthgused by working with Brian Eno in summer 1976 that they reformed especially for the occasion. This album, bolstered by three songs not on the original 1997 issue, demonstrates what a wise move it was. Though not an extreme listen, these twelve superbly nuanced pieces still go far; the shifting, sixteen-minute Krautathon of Sometimes In Autumn, for example, has passages that approximate a switched-on particle accelerator, a colossal weather system and Popol Vuh in Nosferatu mode, while the shimmering nine-minute By The Riverside foresees the repetitive forms later used by electronic dance tracks. Suitably for improvised music, it seems to capture a process of creation - these songs warp and grow as you listen - meaning that thirty-three years on, Tracks And Traces remains an absorbing musical enigma.