Brian Eno is MORE DARK THAN SHARK

INTERVIEWS, REVIEWS & RELATED ARTICLES

Mojo JANUARY 2018 - by David Sheppard

TOM ROGERSON WITH BRIAN ENO: FINDING SHORE

Ex-Three Trapped Tigers pianist and ambient grandee in littoral harmony.

A one-time student of Harrison Birtwistle, hotel accompanist, New York jazzer and noisy post-rocker Tom Rogerson was searching for his true compositional 'voice' when Eno stepped in as facilitator, subjecting the pianist's by turns-delicate and ostentatiously tumbling keyboard style to both discreet electronic modifications and more conspicuous digital interventions. Informed by, and evocative of, the glinting Suffolk coast, from whence both protagonists hail, essays like Motion In Field, with its pulsing synth waves and electronics shards lapping against elegant piano arpeggios, the exquisitely drifting, cloud-like Quoit Blue and The Gabbard, with its ominous anchor throbs and glacial note clusters, feel like bold, modern updates of Eno's immersive collaborations with Harold Budd. That said, a sprinkling of more angular, dissonant tracks, like the clanging Eastern Stack, may sail a little too close to his soi-disant 'jazz that nobody asked for' for some tastes.