Brian Eno is MORE DARK THAN SHARK

INTERVIEWS, REVIEWS & RELATED ARTICLES

Mojo SEPTEMBER 2004 - by Mike Barnes

FRIPP & ENO: THE EQUATORIAL STARS

First new album in twenty-nine years by rock's most cerebral odd couple.

Proving that you can sometimes judge a CD by its cover, this really does sound like a star chart set to music: a cooler, darker companion to Eno's Apollo, perhaps. It's also an ambient set of quite stunning beauty. Fripp & Eno's work in the '70s was mostly sounds layered by using tape loops across two recorders in tandem, so that process largely dictated its shape. Here the duo are set free. Eno's soundscapes ripple off into the distance and Fripp's guitar slides up to unexpected notes, buzzing ominously, then singing sweetly. His unique sense of melody shines through, infusing his reflective lines on Meissa and spiralling off on eccentric orbits on Anka. When a subdued groove starts up on Altair it's the gentlest of shocks, but by the lengthy closer Terebellum all that has been atomised into space dust.