Brian Eno is MORE DARK THAN SHARK

INTERVIEWS, REVIEWS & RELATED ARTICLES

Record Collector CHRISTMAS 2010 - by Jason Draper

BRIAN ENO WITH JON HOPKINS & LEO ABRAHAMS: SMALL CRAFT ON A MILK SEA

Wave hello to a lifeboat.

Having already composed a collection of music for The Lovely Bones around the thirty-year anniversary of Music For Films, Eno returns to the soundtracking of non-existent visuals that has fuelled some of his best work, without necessarily breaking new ground. And while the dreamy opener Emerald And Lime sets the scene for some aquatic drifting and sinking into the sea's cold bosom, Small Craft On A Milk Sea could almost be a sampler for an art house Oscars: fifteen loosely-cohesive tracks that make you wonder why the electronica magus never signed to Warp before.

Eno himself refers to these recordings as "the mirror-image of silent movies - sound-only movies", which makes it all sound a little more po-faced than it actually is. Regardless of its nudge-nudge title, Bone Jump sounds like the sort of thing you'd get in a wacky haunted house, where cotton wool ghosts chase blancmange fairies. In the main, however, Small Craft drifts between harder-edged frenetic judders such as Horse and 2 Forms Of Anger, and heavy ominous pieces such as Dust Shuffle and Slow Ice, Old Moon. By virtue of this, the dreamier pieces (Lesser Heaven, Late Anthropocene) stand out for their delicacy. While it may never become a desert island disc, Small Craft On A Milk Sea should certainly buoy your spirits.