Brian Eno is MORE DARK THAN SHARK

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Wall Street Journal FEBRUARY 6, 2024 - by Marc Myers

BRIAN ENO'S 'HERE COME THE WARM JETS' TURNS 50

The British musician's first solo album fused the sounds of space-age electronica with rock, and launched his career as the innovative producer who would eventually work with David Bowie, U2 and many others.

In 1973, Alfi Sinniger directed and produced Eno, a 24-minute British documentary on Brian Eno that centered on the recording sessions for his first studio album, Here Come The Warm Jets. At the time, Mr. Eno was an avant-garde keyboardist and composer who had just left Roxy Music to become a solo artist. As the film shows, Mr. Eno's abstract, space-age electronica and sonic layering was relatively new to rock in the early 1970s.

When Warm Jets was released fifty years ago this month, the album introduced a new landscape for rock's possibilities. Though no singles were released, and the LP reached only Number 151 on Billboard's Hot 200 chart, leading critics praised its inventiveness, including Cynthia Dagnal who, in Rolling Stone magazine, called it "a very compelling experiment in controlled chaos." Mr. Eno's early use of a synthesizer, tape loops of ambient sounds and voices, and a variety of odd electroacoustic overdubs enabled him to create a futuristic backdrop for the LP's songs. The album would launch his career as a cutting-edge collaborator and producer.

The synthesizer Mr. Eno used on Warm Jets was a portable EMS VCS 3 that was still new to most rock musicians. The unit featured a built-in joystick to create sound effects, and an external keyboard and other instruments could be attached to process notes. In addition to the VCS 3, Mr. Eno used electronic keyboards, voice-alteration electronics and tape loops to create captivating textures and drone effects.

Fortunately, sci-fi sounds don't dominate the album. At the heart of each song is glam rock - a British hard-rock form that borrowed from bubblegum pop, cabaret and kitschy movie soundtracks. Mr. Eno's use of electronica was for coloration, texture and to shift moods by adding terror to an upbeat song, for example, or hysteria to a rock 'n' roll throwback. Warm Jets is about contrasts and jumping back and forth between rock's past and future.

Mr. Eno and the long list of musicians he selected for different tracks recorded the album in just twelve days. As he said in the documentary, "The synthesizer, the way I play it, doesn't need any manual skill. You don't have to be clever to turn a knob."

The art is produced by Mr. Eno's judgment - his choice of sounds and how they merge with traditional instruments. Artistically, Mr. Eno described himself in the film as "decadent," meaning his music was straddling "half of one culture that's just dying and half of another that's just being born."

The album's lead-off track, Needles In The Camel's Eye, was co-written by Mr. Eno and guitarist Phil Manzanera and opens powerfully with a dense wall of electric guitar chords akin to The Beatles' And Your Bird Can Sing. The chords continue drone-like, with the song's melody borrowing from The Velvet Underground's Sunday Morning.

Cindy Tells Me, also by Messrs. Eno and Manzanera, is rooted in early 1960s girl-group pop. It features a haunting tape loop of background falsetto notes and Mr. Eno playing a chord repeatedly on an acoustic piano as a Little Richard reference. Then comes a swarm of electronic sound and a guitar played with fuzz tones. Lyrics explore women's liberation and the addictive convenience of appliances: "Cindy tells me, what will they do with their lives / Living quietly like labourer's wives / Perhaps they'll re-acquire those things they've all disposed of."

At the heart of Mr. Eno's Driving Me Backwards are electronic keyboard chords delivered ominously, like Kurt Weill's Alabama Song. We then hear a growing thicket of electronic sounds that create a menacing air behind Mr. Eno's vocal, which centers on the helplessness of adolescent confusion.

The mood changes abruptly in On Some Faraway Beach, a mid-tempo ballad by Mr. Eno that contrasts Beach Boys-like choir harmony and a piano with a dense wall of drums and a tape loop of strings that build to the vocal: "Unlikely / I'll be remembered / As the tide brushes sand in my eyes / I'll drift away."

One of the album's many high points is Blank Frank, which combines a joyous Bo Diddley-like rhythm with tape loops, wailing guitars and feedback capped by a snarling vocal about a "messenger of your doom." The cacophony is a synthesis of early rock 'n' roll and the primal rawness of 1970s glam rock.

The organ and vast vocal layers on Some Of Them Are Old make the song a fascinating bridge between The Beatles' Because (1969) and Queen's Bohemian Rhapsody (1975). The track includes the album's most interesting extended solo - a mash of acoustic and electronic instruments and tape loops that evolve into a crescendo.

The title track was named by Mr. Eno for the droning sound of a plane's engine. The buzzing electronica has the driving energy of 1960s surf rock and yet manages to be both heavy and airy.

In 1973, the 24-track studio was Mr. Eno's sonic test kitchen. His electronic experiments on Here Come The Warm Jets gave him the know-how and arsenal to futurize LPs by other artists, including Nico and John Cale, David Bowie, Devo, Talking Heads, U2 and Coldplay. Mr. Eno's early venture into this space remains thrilling and revolutionary.