Brian Eno is MORE DARK THAN SHARK

INTERVIEWS, REVIEWS & RELATED ARTICLES

Exclaim! MAY 5, 2014 - by Vincent Pollard

ENO/HYDE: SOMEDAY WORLD

On paper, a collaboration between Brian Eno and Underworld's Karl Hyde released on Warp Records is an exciting proposition, indeed. What's more, on Someday World, Eno is not just in a glorified producer role, as you might expect, but is very much a collaborator, playing keys, piano and adding vocals throughout. Unfortunately, the resulting album is a disappointingly pedestrian affair. With its jarring synthetic brass - which is neither as charming or amusingly ironic as its creators seem to think it is - Someday World starts off on the wrong foot from the very first bars.

Despite the interesting threading of Afrobeat and Malian-inspired polyrhythms throughout several tracks, including lead single Daddy's Car, the album's timbral offences far outweigh its merits. A Man Wakes Up sounds more like Happy Mondays jamming with Level 42 than anything you might expect from a duo with Eno and Hyde's stature. The second half of the album has several redemptive compositions - Strip It Down, Mother Of A Dog and Who Rings The Bell, with Hyde's Billy Bragg-esque beat poetry vocals, being some of the more tolerable tracks on the album. Sadly, by then it's already far too late.