INTERVIEWS, REVIEWS & RELATED ARTICLES
Sounds DECEMBER 10, 1977 - by Vivien Goldman
ENO THE ORIGINATOR
BRIAN ENO: BEFORE AND AFTER SCIENCE
REACTIONS:
1) Am I happy or sad that rock music has finally caught up with Eno? He has won his battle to make thought-provoking, surprise New Musick a Western rock reality.
2) Brian Eno is The Originator. He achieves the perfect synthesis. Academy In Peril unites with Paris 1919.
EXPLANATION/INFORMATION:
1) Before And After Science refers to the just-being-charted zone where primitive/sophisticated, conscious/unconscious merge.
2) Eno: "I'm using the word 'science' in a very broad sense to mean the accumulation of rational knowledge. Dub is post-science music where they take a whole complex technology and play with it, have a good time."
The most literal manifestation of that approach comes on the pure dub ("I definitely had that in mind") section of Kurt's Rejoinder. Errol Thompson/Culture could be no wilder.
3) Eno's favourite line on the album is on King's Lead Hat: 'The biology of purpose / Keeps my nose above the surface'.
4) Side one opens with No One Receiving, a disco cut with lyrics that quote T. S. Elliot's Four Quartets reflected in a distorting mirror. Familiar mood - Kraftwerk's Trans-Europe Express, Bowie/Eno's Low. The right time has come.
Side two opens with another disco style - Here He Comes, where The Floaters drift into doowop. 24 Hours From Tulsa/Spanish Harlem as reference points.
5) Before And After Science floats. It flows like a river. The lyrics are full of water references: 'We sleep in the morning / We dream of a ship that sailed 1000 miles away - Spider And I; 'I am on the open sea / Just drifting as the hours go by' - Julie With...; 'Here we are stuck by this river... through the day, as if on an ocean' - By This River; 'We're sailing on the edges of time / We're drifting on the waterline - Back Water.
References Points:
a) afloat in the womb
b) the sea of the unconscious
c) the river of life
d) the Styx
e) the sea is the least explored section of the planet
f) Float On
g) the riverboat ride in Night Of The Hunter
6) Track to track = landscape to landscape. This album can be viewed as extrapolations of the different dream snippets on Music For Films.
7) Enclosed with the album is the best surprise gift ("I hope people don't regard it as just another record company freebie. It's part of the record"). Four reproductions of paintings by Eno's close associate Peter Schmidt. Schmidt's visuals always parallel Eno's sounds; they move in creative synchompatibility. The pictures, watercolours in the original, represent mystery/surprise/stillness. As does Eno's music.
They are beautifully presented in a sombre/chic grey card folder. The album is sub-titled - 'Fourteen Pictures'. There are ten songs on the album.
Eno would like visuals to be on sale alongside the sounds in record shops, to be appreciated on the mass level of rock appreciation.
8) Congratulations to the underestimated Paul Rudolph, Dave Mattacks, Percy Jones, Fred Frith, Brian Turrington, Robert Fripp, Phil Manzanera, and all other musicians involved.
9) Exquisite crystal production by Eno and Rhett Davies.
10) The titles are games. Play while you play.
CONCLUSIONS:
Time may have caught up with Brian Eno, but he will always continue to create the inspirational fusions that are late '70s source music.
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