It’s difficult to quantify the importance and influence of Brian Eno. A singer, producer, composer, artist and more, Eno is a pioneer of a multitude of unique offshoots of electronic genres, most importantly ambient. On top of that, he was also in Roxy Music, produced three Talking Heads albums, and was a driving force behind David Bowie‘s phenomenal “Berlin Trilogy,” – Low, Heroes and Lodger. He’s also worked with some of the greatest artists across a myriad genres, including, but certainly not limited to, James Blake, Grace Jones, Coldplay and Paul Simon.
So the news of a new Brian Eno album is nothing short of wonderful. His first release since LUX back in 2012, The Ship is set for release on Friday April 29 via Warp Records.
Opening track The Ship is 21 minutes long (standard for Eno, really,) followed by Fickle Sun, split into three movements. Perhaps most excitingly is news that the album will be closed by a cover of I’m Set Free by The Velvet Underground, a band who Eno has long cited as a core early influence.
In his own words, Eno explains the album’s creation:
“On a musical level, I wanted to make a record of songs that didn’t rely on the normal underpinnings of rhythmic structure and chord progressions but which allowed voices to exist in their own space and time, like events in a landscape. I wanted to place sonic events in a free, open space.
“One of the starting points was my fascination with the First World War, that extraordinary trans-cultural madness that arose out of a clash of hubris between empires. It followed immediately after the sinking of the Titanic, which to me is its analogue. The Titanic was the Unsinkable Ship, the apex of human technical power, set to be Man’s greatest triumph over nature. The First World War was the war of materiel, ‘over by Christmas’, set to be the triumph of Will and Steel over humanity. The catastrophic failure of each set the stage for a century of dramatic experiments with the relationships between humans and the worlds they make for themselves.
“I was thinking of those vast dun Belgian fields where the First World War was agonisingly ground out; and the vast deep ocean where the Titanic sank; and how little difference all that human hope and disappointment made to it. They persist and we pass in a cloud of chatter.”
Eno is also set to exhibit an art installation at various locations across the globe, to coincide with the release.
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Image: Shamil Tanner
This was originally published on Indie News