Brian Eno is MORE DARK THAN SHARK

INTERVIEWS, REVIEWS & RELATED ARTICLES

Q APRIL 2016 - by James Oldham

BRIAN ENO: THE SHIP

Eno continues his triumphant artistic rebirth on Warp.

After years of trying to make the stadium rock of U2 and Coldplay more intriguing, 2012's Lux album was a welcome artistic refocusing from Eno. Its skilled re-engagement with his lifelong experiments with texture, drone and ambience are continued here on The Ship. Inspired by "the vast deep ocean where the Titanic sank" and the battlefields of World War I, this album conspires to be both immense and intimate at the same time. The first track, with its collage of echoing sonar electronics, radio broadcasts and chanted lyrics, is a suitably ambitious opener but it's more than matched by what follows. The reverberant atmospherics of Fickle Sun, a suite in three parts, are revelatory. They conclude with a weightless cover of The Velvet Underground's I'm Set Free, which feels like a completing of a circle for Eno. This is magnificent.