INTERVIEWS, REVIEWS & RELATED ARTICLES
Kataweb Music APRIL 30, 2002 - by Francesca Ortalli
BRIAN ENO, THE ROCK GURU, RETURNS TO THE LIVE STAGE
After an absence of almost thirty years from live performance, the ex-Roxy Music member has returned to the stage, at Cagliari, with J. Peter Schwalm to present his new work. Kataweb Music was there to see it for you.
Brian Eno was at the Fondazione Teatro Lirico on Monday evening as part of the festival di Sant'Efisio, the first date of a short Italian tour that will take him to Rome on May 21 and then to Milan on the 25th. With him will be J. Peter Schwalm, co-writer and player on Drawn From Life.
With a format borrowed from the most classic rock concerts Eno inserted, apart from his keyboards and Schwalm's synths, the guitar of Leo Abrahams, the drums of Christoph Buhse and the bass of Tim Harris. The only concession to the inspiration of the ex-Roxy Music member was the violin of very good Nell Catchpole and the robust percussion of Heiko Himminghoffen - together to tell the story of the latest visionary project of the philosopher of rock.
Between the harmonies and dissonances, the switched-on rhythms and sweet ballads, in an hour-and-a-half this concert reveals all the art of Brian Eno. Sonic alchemist, careful in capturing new breaths and tendencies, Eno seems not to have forgotten his time spent in Roxy Music who, for the entire night, remained an encumbering presence from that period - in that particular atmosphere inhaled from the 1980s that succeeds in imposing its indelible mark on the history of music. And so Light A Cigarette is impregnated with those rhythms so dear to Japan while Thin Man borrows from the foaming music of Talking Heads. And there's King Crimson, the scratching guitars of The Scorpions and the dance that extends across the tapping of the tribal rhythms of Warnography to the daring experiments of Two Voices, where the entire vocal gamut is explored de-compiling and recompiling in an infinite play. Drawn From Life becomes a voyage of discovery of the innumerable possibilities of the sonic plasma, transformed into a pulsating material vital to the eclectic art of Brian Eno, guru of a music worth discovering and tasting, tireless constructor of perfect electronic architecture.
Beside him a group of very good musicians, attentive to the winks and directions from Eno. Standing out from all of them was the violin virtuoso Catchpole, who knows how to gather dance rhythms or the classic beats of the more traditional ballads across her strings. Long and warm was the applause of the public who Eno rewarded with an encore.
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