Brian Eno is MORE DARK THAN SHARK

INTERVIEWS, REVIEWS & RELATED ARTICLES

Uncut OCTOBER 2020 - by Peter Watts

BRIAN ENO & JOHN CALE: WRONG WAY UP

Classic Eno/Cale collaboration reissued with additional material

Following his incredible run from Here Come The Warm Jets to Before And After Science, Brian Eno dived so deep into production and ambience he seemed to abandon the brilliant but relatively conventional "song-based recordings" of those early albums forever. That changed, unexpectedly, with 1990's Wrong Way Up, a masterful midlife collaboration with John Cale, who Eno had worked on-and-off with since the mid-1970s. A marvel from start to close, this is a gently quirky collection of terrific pop songs - Spinning Away, Been There Done That, In The Backroom, and Footsteps are all outstanding. From listening, you'd never imagine that the recording got so fraught that at one point Eno attacked Cale with a chopstick. This reissue includes unreleased tracks Grandfather's House and the piano instrumental Palanquin, both worthwhile. Also reissued is Spinner, Eno's curious 1995 collaboration with Jah Wobble, which saw the PiL bassist remix Eno's soundtrack to a Derek Jarman film, Glitterbug. Wobble called in Can's Jaki Liebezeit to drum on some tracks and fiddled about here and there, but largely worked around the edges, leaving Eno exquisitely icy atmosphere intact. Again, there are additional tracks for the reissue - Stravinsky is an Eno original from the Jarman soundtrack, and the melancholic Lockdown is a new track by Wobble.

EXTRAS: 7/10 - Bonus tracks, contemporary interview with Eno on Wrong Way Up; new liner notes/painting by Wobble on Spinner.