Send "Brian Eno " Ringtones to your Cell 
| Pitchfork |
 A Google search for "Small Craft on a Milk Sea", the title of Brian Eno's new album, turns up several sites focused on the record's next-level packaging. As phrases like "signed and numbered," "copper plate," and "lithographic" gave way to descriptors like "birch paper-covered slipcase," "crimson stock," and "foil blocked credit sheet," my first thought was whether the relentless fetishization of the physical product does the content within any favors.My second thought was, of course it's going to be lavish. This is, after all, Brian Eno and Warp, two institutions of electronic music, braininess, and design, coming together for their first-ever co-release. The union is so forehead-slappingly perfect that one wonders how the two have managed to co-exist independently for so long. But if lavish is the language here, it's for more than celebratory reasons. Constructed partly out of rejects from Eno's soundtrack work for Peter Jackson's The Lovely Bones and partly from original studio sessions held in 2009 and 2010, Small Craft on a Milk Sea is being pitched as a loose homage to the very concept of soundtrack music. This concept is not a new one, not even for Eno, whose 1978 album Music for Films and its 1983 sequel were borne from identical insight. If not for the sheer amount of time that's passed, or his new collaborators-- electronic music composer Jon Hopkins and guitarist Leo Abrahams-- he might easily have christened this Music for Films 3. And the truth is that, although much has been made of the trio's working process and how it relied equally on improvization and computer editing, Small Craft on a Milk Sea sits surprisingly comfortably alongside the records from Eno's ambient and experimental golden era. Others might argue that fit is a little too comfortable. With few exceptions, Small Craft on a Milk Sea's 15 songs fall roughly into one of two categories: 'ambient' and 'active.' The former contains some predictably transcendent moments, such as the gently climbing opener "Emerald and Lime" and it's later-appearing sister "Emerald and Stone", both of which conjure up the sort of meandering, piano-led beauty that Angelo Badalamenti specializes in. Elsewhere, another twin set, "Complex Heaven" and "Lesser Heaven", offer barely moving soundscapes that are respectively foreboding and serene, and "Calcium Needles" invokes an ambient frost that's as chilly as Biosphere's most glacial work....full text |
| Popmatters |
| Finally, Warp Records and Brian Eno come together. These two names hold equal footing in the pantheon of electronic music, Eno having charted the way and the Warp Records roster picking up on his cues to continually push the genre forward in the past two decades. Crucially, neither Eno nor the folks at Warp ever seem comfortable merely repeating patterns of success. Eno’s music ranges from avant-garde pop to the surreally ambient (and he coined the term, let’s not forget), while Warp’s recent releases include works from math rock revivalists Battles and chamber pop heroes Grizzly Bear. Both Eno and his new home label find their creative fuel in constant expansion and restless experimentation. The first fruits of this new artistic relationship, Small Craft on a Milk Sea, finds Eno exploring all facets of his previous instrumental work, while maintaining the sense of forward-thinking freshness that has rightfully given him a reputation as one of the most influential and consistent musicians of the last half century. “Emerald and Lime” opens the record with tones and atmospherics that wouldn’t sound out of place on his landmark Ambient series. Gentle keyboards soothe with an ethereal melody, the higher notes of a melodica providing welcome harmonies. It’s a beautiful composition—and also something of a feint, or at least a slight misdirection. Much of the music to follow on Small Craft will be similarly spare, but the central songs here seem possessed of an intention not to relax but to provoke and unsettle. “Complex Heaven”, the next track, signals the change in mood. Eno bases it, too, around slowly repeating chord progressions, though this time on a reverb-laden clean electric guitar. Synth drones and dissonant blips swirl above and below the central instrumentation, and it all sounds vaguely ominous, a threat of a threat. The album’s title track focuses the sinister energy even further, with its tensely coiled palm mutes and mournful melody, until “Flint March” lets the foreboding explode into pounding tribal rhythms and air raid synths. Eno waits until now to bring percussion into the mix, and it’s a brilliantly executed move, startling and brutal in its violent revelation....full text |
| Tinymixtapes |
| If you were to dig through a random neighbor's record collection, chances are you'd come across something with Brian Eno's fingerprints on it. Maybe massive-selling offerings by Coldplay or U2, the still commercially viable art-rock of The Talking Heads and Devo — or, if your neighbor is anything like a TMT reader, perhaps there are a few Roxy Music albums, the Eno-curated No New York no-wave compilation, Bowie's Krautrock-leaning "Berlin Trilogy," or My Life in the Bush of Ghosts, Eno's 1981 collaboration with the Head's David Byrne, often considered one of the first records to fully combine electronics, sampling, and divergent world music sounds. Few artists have been all things to all people. Eno has achieved complete artistic respect while also managing to sell a boatload of records, appealing as much to your weirdo, new age-loving uncle as to your bone-through-the-nose punk rock cousin. His own solo work has been nearly as varied, with early records like Here Come the Warm Jets and Taking Tiger Mountain (By Strategy) pioneering electronic-influenced glam-pop, while his ambient series, Music for... various places, began his quest to change the way listeners perceive music, leading him down the road of multi-media presentation and soundtrack work. Eno's last album proper, Another Day on Earth, was touted as his return to pop song form. His latest, Small Craft on a Milk Sea, is his first for the unshakably hip Warp label. It doesn't follow the pop format suite, nor does it retreat entirely into his world of pure sound, either. Aided by guitarist Leo Abrahams and keyboardist Jon Hopkins, both held over from Another Day on Earth, Small Craft strikes an odd balance, alternately serene and fiercely coiled, given to listless, floating synths and driving beats....full text |
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