Brian Eno is MORE DARK THAN SHARK

INTERVIEWS, REVIEWS & RELATED ARTICLES

Cowbell JULY 2011 - by Brian Baker

BRIAN ENO: DRUMS BETWEEN THE BELLS

Last year's Small Craft On A Milk Sea was proof of Brian Eno's powerful ability to once again access his inner pop child while maintaining a firm stance in his ephemeral green ambient world, while 2008's Everything That Happens Will Happen Today was evidence of Eno's collaborative brilliance, particularly where his crazy headmaster persona intersected with David Byrne's twisted art student normality. Drums Between The Bells seems structure to showcase all of Eno's considerable talents by knitting them together in a stream of musical consciousness that touches on the totality of his incalculable genius, sometimes all within a single wildly writhing composition.

Take the disc's ostensible title track, Sounds Alien, for example: A chugging synthetic beat gives way to thundering Chemical Brothers guitars and cryptically perfect lyrics from poet Rick Holland delivered by one of a cadre of warmly detached female vocalists. As usual, an album's worth of this would kill, but Eno is far more interested in texture and atmospherics, so he utilises his self-described role as sonic landscaper to shape the distinct yet connected songs on Drums Between The Bells into soft ballistic hymns for the electronic church of the new millennium.