Brian Eno is MORE DARK THAN SHARK

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Mojo SEPTEMBER 2014 - by Andy Cowan

ENO/HYDE: HIGH LIFE

Quick-fire experimental second LP from ambient don and Underworld misfit.

When Brian Eno and Karl Hyde wrapped up work on Someday World earlier this year, they kept the tapes running. While its prevailing electro-acoustic ambience made for a curiously backwards-looking work, with echoes of Another Green World and Eno's Talking Heads productions, High Life positions Hyde's funky guitar playing at the centre of its broader dabbles into electronica and Afrobeat. Recording with the seatbelt off seems to have galvanised the Underworld auteur, his frenetic rhythmic chops forming the core of Return and DBF's three-way ruck between Fela Kuti, Squarepusher and Booker T. & The MGs, while discordant Frippesque solos punctuate the skewed polyrhythms of Moulded Life. It's more than a worthy companion piece, with an unfinished, scrapbook feel that's far from unbecoming.