INTERVIEWS, REVIEWS & RELATED ARTICLES
Sydney Morning Herald JULY 8, 2011 - by Michael Dwyer
BRIAN ENO: DRUMS BETWEEN THE BELLS
Meditation tapes often come with a caution about listening while operating a motor vehicle. Created by Brian Eno to enhance and envelop the work of contemporary poet Rick Holland, these mesmeric collages of spoken word and music begin with driving electronic grooves before wandering across lanes into a delightfully soporific fog.
The crisp consonants and techno-language of Glitch, Sounds Alien and Multimedia call for sharp, rhythmic soundscapes.
Dreambirds and Pour It Out make their feather beds in chiming caverns of classic Eno ambience - perfect atmospheres for Holland's beguiling images and the intimate, heavily accented recitations of various found females.
Voices are sometimes treated - dramatically auto-tuned on Glitch; slooooowly stretched on The Real - but more often Holland's words are laid bare by unadulterated breath.
If this were a book of poems, its centre pages would offer the blank respite of a contemplative Eno instrumental; and its afterword, a long, mysterious prayer intoned in a church of wind chimes.
Most tellingly, it would be the kind you would want to open more than once.
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