Marking
its golden jubilee today is the debut solo album from Brian Eno, Here
Come the Warm Jets, which was released 50 years ago, on February 8th,
1974. While the album's experimentation and innovation rest on numerous
contrivances, the end results certainly do not sound contrived.
Eno began working on the album shortly after his departure from Roxy Music, and he would utilized a number of former band-mates to contribute to the record, in a addition to a long list of other extremely varied collaborators. His explicit intent with his selection of guests was to counterpoint them against each other in an attempt to contrast seemingly incompatible styles and personal approaches. He specifically wanted to encourage them to break from their own conventions by being forced to interact with others who worked in entirely different ways. In terms of directing their performances, Eno often resorted to non-verbal instruction, using body language and interpretive dance moves as a means of expressing his intent. Once he'd captured performances from his musicians, he'd then take that raw material and process it in the studio until he attained often unrecognizable end results. Stylistically, he pulled together a pastiche of influences, both contemporary and vintage, incorporating elements of 1950s pop and rock & roll with elements of modern art-rock.
Though Eno didn't consider himself much of a singer, and indeed would mostly abandon that aspect of his creative arsenal in his later works, for his initial "pop" centred albums, he developed an approach to lyrics that involved first making nonsense vocalizations along with the music in order to identify phonetic qualities that best suited the piece. From this point, he'd gradually build in actual words and phrasing that ingrained those qualities, with the meaning of the lyrics being rather secondary to the process. This technique tended to deliver results that were cryptic and free-associative. As a result, Eno discouraged listeners from imposing too much emphasis on the meaning in the words. It's an approach that he'd pass on to people like David Bowie, who'd incorporate the methodology into the albums Eno produced with him during their Berlin era collaborations.
Critical response to the album was near universally positive, with only a few contrarian opinions on the album's merits. Critic Lester Bangs of CREEM declared it "incredible," and noted that "the predominant feel is a strange mating of edgy dread with wild first-time-out exuberance." Robert Christgau of The Village Voice gave it an "A" rating, stating that "The idea of this record, 'Top of the Pops' from 'quasi-dadaist British synth wizard', may put you off, but the actuality is quite engaging in a vaguely Velvet Underground kind of way." With Eno coming off of his association with Roxy Music, he had enough career momentum to make the record a top 40 hit in the UK, making it one of his best selling solo releases, though it barely broke the top 200 in the US. Nevertheless, its legacy has assured it a place as essential listening when it comes to important releases from that era and in terms of appreciating Eno's catalogue in all its diversity.
Eno began working on the album shortly after his departure from Roxy Music, and he would utilized a number of former band-mates to contribute to the record, in a addition to a long list of other extremely varied collaborators. His explicit intent with his selection of guests was to counterpoint them against each other in an attempt to contrast seemingly incompatible styles and personal approaches. He specifically wanted to encourage them to break from their own conventions by being forced to interact with others who worked in entirely different ways. In terms of directing their performances, Eno often resorted to non-verbal instruction, using body language and interpretive dance moves as a means of expressing his intent. Once he'd captured performances from his musicians, he'd then take that raw material and process it in the studio until he attained often unrecognizable end results. Stylistically, he pulled together a pastiche of influences, both contemporary and vintage, incorporating elements of 1950s pop and rock & roll with elements of modern art-rock.
Though Eno didn't consider himself much of a singer, and indeed would mostly abandon that aspect of his creative arsenal in his later works, for his initial "pop" centred albums, he developed an approach to lyrics that involved first making nonsense vocalizations along with the music in order to identify phonetic qualities that best suited the piece. From this point, he'd gradually build in actual words and phrasing that ingrained those qualities, with the meaning of the lyrics being rather secondary to the process. This technique tended to deliver results that were cryptic and free-associative. As a result, Eno discouraged listeners from imposing too much emphasis on the meaning in the words. It's an approach that he'd pass on to people like David Bowie, who'd incorporate the methodology into the albums Eno produced with him during their Berlin era collaborations.
Critical response to the album was near universally positive, with only a few contrarian opinions on the album's merits. Critic Lester Bangs of CREEM declared it "incredible," and noted that "the predominant feel is a strange mating of edgy dread with wild first-time-out exuberance." Robert Christgau of The Village Voice gave it an "A" rating, stating that "The idea of this record, 'Top of the Pops' from 'quasi-dadaist British synth wizard', may put you off, but the actuality is quite engaging in a vaguely Velvet Underground kind of way." With Eno coming off of his association with Roxy Music, he had enough career momentum to make the record a top 40 hit in the UK, making it one of his best selling solo releases, though it barely broke the top 200 in the US. Nevertheless, its legacy has assured it a place as essential listening when it comes to important releases from that era and in terms of appreciating Eno's catalogue in all its diversity.
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