Brian Eno is MORE DARK THAN SHARK

INTERVIEWS, REVIEWS & RELATED ARTICLES

Record Collector JULY 2011 - by Ian Shirley

BRIAN ENO & THE WORDS OF RICK HOLLAND: DRUMS BETWEEN THE BELLS

Eno Warps again.

The coming together of Brian Eno and the Warp imprint was trumpeted as a perfect marriage. Following the honeymoon of Small Craft On A Milk Sea, we now have a second album capturing life in a more settled routine.

Eno bends his music around and beneath Rick Holland's words, with a selection of guests reading the narratives alongside Eno himself. With the mainman appearing on five of the sixteen tracks, the variety of narrators accompanying Eno gives the album the feeling of listening to a series of short stories written by common authors.

Bless This Space is, however, a pretty tame choice of opener, but Glitch is a wonderful piece, with Grazyna Goworek's voice fed through a vocoder that gives Eno some grit to work with. Dreambirds, Pour It Out and The Real work very well too, with Eno laying down dreamy backdrops, though his clanging about on Sounds Alien doesn't mix well with the spoken word.

There are three versions of this release, with the one to have being the two-CD or the two-LP version which, respectively, come with an additional CD or free download of the music unadorned. It reveals some of the most focused work Eno has produced in years.