David Bowie- "Be My Wife" Video (1977)

Classic Bowie from his "Thin White Duke" years. This song can be found on the first album of the Berlin Trilogy, Low:

Brian Eno- Here Come the Warm Jets (1973) / The Winkies (Bootleg) MP3 & FLAC

"Oh perfect masters, they thrive on disasters. They all look so harmless 

till they find their way up there."

Brian Eno on the random circumstances leading to his tenure in Roxy Music: "As a result of going into a subway station and meeting Andy [Mackay], I joined Roxy Music, and, as a result of that, I have a career in music. If I'd walked ten yards further on the platform, or missed that train, or been in the next carriage, I probably would have been an art teacher now." Although initially, Eno's role in the band was behind the scenes as "Technical Adviser" due to his lack of experience as a performing musician, it didn't take long for him to join his Roxy Music band-mates on stage where he quickly evolved into one of the most flamboyant figures on the British Glam scene (which was an achievement in itself). Truth be told, Eno was never going to last long as part of the supporting cast for a figure like Bryan Ferry, who was becoming more and more concerned with mainstream success just as Eno was trying to push the band in a more artsy, proggy direction. Eno: "My position in Roxy Music was always half-way between the musical and the theoretical. I was never the sort of person who could sit down at the piano and hammer out a song, or says, 'Here man, play this.' I'm much more interested in talking about the ideas behind the music. Working things out from the aesthetic." Things came to a head immediately following the tour in support of Roxy Music's second album, For Your Pleasure, when Eno as well as several other band members expressed concern over Ferry's increasingly domineering control of the band's direction. What resulted was Eno's June, 1973 departure from Roxy Music and the beginning of one of the most innovative and uncompromising solo careers of the rock era.

Brian Eno: "I'm always prone to do things very quickly, which has distinct advantages- you leave all the mistakes in, and the mistakes always become interesting. The Velvet Underground, for example, are the epitome of mistake-filled music, and it makes the music very subtle and beautiful." As would prove to be his habit throughout the remainder of the seventies, Eno took very little time after exiting Roxy Music to finish his first solo LP, Here Come the Warm Jets. Armed with a highly suggestive title, which, in an infamous NME interview with future-Pretender Chrissie Hynde, Eno hinted might refer to the dreaded "golden shower," the album was all but guaranteed to turn heads, but Eno's time in Roxy Music had also garnered him quite a following among critics; all of this helped make his debut one of the most commercially successful albums of Eno's career. The sessions for Here Come the Warm Jets included Roxy Music sans Ferry, Robert Fripp & John Wetton from King Crimson, as well as members of Hawkwind and Pink Fairies, and aside from taking over lead vocals (for the first time), Eno was apparently content to reprise his Roxy-era role of master sound processor, something which lends the album its uniquely manic feel. While in some ways the album is clearly grounded in the artier margins of the U.K. Glam movement, which had more or less defined the early seventies but by late '73 was beginning to lose steam, in other ways, its avant-garde flourishes and heavily processed sound are anticipatory of the Post-Punk and Shoegaze movements that would respectively punctuate the closing years of the seventies and the eighties. Among the album's many standouts, none is as instantly memorable and confounding as "Dead Finks Don't Talk," a song which Eno has admitted was, at least on an unconscious level, a riposte directed at Ferry. With its military drum beat, darkly humorous lyrics, lovely piano part, heavily distorted guitars, and multitude of vocal effects (including an Elvis impersonation by Eno), it is a tour de force in tension-building and integrating the unexpected. The loveliest song on Here Come the Warm Jets is "Some of Them Are Old," which sounds almost like late-period Beatles with its psychedelic organs and multi-tracked vocals, but what really sets the song apart is the off-kilter Hawaiian-style guitar solo that sounds like it's being played underwater. Eno's early pop-oriented solo albums are often a shock to those who are only familiar with his ambient work; however, they stand as some of the most inventive and prescient records of the Glam-era. Eno: "I'm more of a technologist, manipulating studios and musicians in a funny way. It sounds fantastic but one of the things I tried to do with Warm Jets was to bring musicians together who would normally never play together and to play a music that they couldn't agree upon. The music would come from the chemistry."

Brian Eno Series, #10: Brian Eno- Taking Tiger Mountain (By Strategy) (1974) MP3 & FLAC

"There's a brain in the table. There's a heart in the chair, and they all live in Jesus. It's a family affair."

Sandwiched chronologically between Eno's two best known (though radically different) "rock" albums, Here Come the Warm Jets and Another Green World, Taking Tiger Mountain (By Strategy) tends to be vastly underrated (or put more succinctly, under-appreciated), an ironic fate given that it may be the most consistent album of Eno's early solo career. Loosely constructed as a concept album based on a Chinese revolutionary opera bearing the same title, the songs, though uniformly dark, tend to be more humorous and playful than such an inspiration would seem to allow for. But then Eno's sense of humor and taste for ambiguity always were trademarks of his early Glam-influenced work. What is rarely discussed in reference to this album is its influence on the Post-Punk movement five years later. There is no better example of a Post-Punk prototype than "Third Uncle" with its scratchy guitars, clanging percussion and obliquely satirical lyrics. It is no coincidence that Bauhaus ably covered this song on their 1982 album, The Sky's Gone Out. Taking Tiger Mountain (By Strategy) is endlessly inventive both musically and lyrically, and in my opinion stands shoulder to shoulder with the best albums of its time.

One Series Ends; Another Begins (soon)

Hi, just a "heads up" that the next Brian Eno post, #10, will be the last in the series. I still have some Eno stuff that hasn't been posted, so it's certainly not the last we'll see of him on The Killing Moon. Meanwhile, I am busy preparing the next project: Scott Walker: The Series. This will also be 10 posts in length and will include a few recordings that do not seem to be available anywhere in cyberspace in a lossless format- stay tuned!

As with the Eno Series, I will be posting recordings from other artists in between the Scott Walker posts, so don't worry; it won't be all Scott Walker all the time.

Brian Eno Series, #9: Robert Fripp & Brian Eno: No Pussyfooting (1973) Limited Ed. (Bonus Disc) MP3 & FLAC

Robert Fripp and Brian Eno's first collaborative effort was recorded while Eno was hard at work on his first solo album, Here Come the Warm Jets, and it marks not only Fripp's first foray into what would later come to be known as "frippertronics," but it also marks Eno's first experimental/Ambient recording. The music was created using two Revox tape recorders set up to play recorded sounds randomly and on a continuing loop, the volume descending slightly with each iteration in order to create a decay effect. On top of this repetitive yet dynamic soundscape, Fripp's beautifully serpentine guitar solos weave in and out, sometimes joining and melting into the loop themselves. While not entirely original (Terry Riley had experimented with this method years earlier), on No Pussyfooting, this all works to great affect, especially on "The Heavenly Music Corporation" suite, perhaps my favorite piece of "Ambient" music; with its melancholy drone and Fripp's aeronautical guitar antics, this is music paying homage to the depthless beauty of the arbitrary.

Brian Eno Series, #8: Brian Eno- Another Green World (1975) MP3 & FLAC

"Well we rested in the desert where the bones were white as teeth sir, and we saw St. Elmo's fire splitting ions in the ether."

Unquestionably Eno's masterpiece and a huge artistic leap forward from the brilliant tongue-in-cheek Art-Glam of his first two post-Roxy releases, Another Green World is where Brian Eno became Brian Eno, finally privileging sonic experimentation over pop song structure. However, don't let the term "experimentation" fool you; this is album is full of sumptuous, gorgeous music. While there are a few pop songs in the mix (and quite good ones at that), much of Another Green World is comprised of minimalist instrumental tracks that point forward to Eno's Ambient works, while still managing to utilize rhythm and melody in a way that allows them to carry what, for all intents and purposes, is still a "Rock" album. In my opinion, there is no better place to start with Eno; this is absolutely essential listening, even for those with no more than a passing interest in experimental pop.

Brian Eno Series, #7: Brian Eno & John Cale- Wrong Way Up (1990) MP3 & FLAC

"I am the crow of desperation. I need no fact or validation. I span relentless variation. I scramble in the dust of a failing nation."

A one-off collaboration with John Cale, Wrong Way Up marked Brian Eno's very unexpected return to "pop" music after spending more than a decade submersed in Ambient projects. While Eno's next album, Nerve Net, would also adopt a more Rock-inspired approach, Wrong Way Up exists in Eno's oeuvre as something of an enigma, seemingly without context, and all the more brilliant for this. Of course, Eno and Cale did have some history together, most notably on Cale's mid-70s standouts, Fear (1974) and Slow Dazzle (1975). Nevertheless, on Wrong Way Up, both embrace a level of pop-sheen quite unprecedented in their earlier works. While the album certainly has a "consciously accessible" air to it and at times suffers from Cale's inherent (especially late career) pretensions, it is shocking how underrated it is given that it contains some of the best "straightforward" pop songs either of these two "sideways" artists ever committed to tape. For evidence, listen to "The River," which features Eno as nothing less than a Country crooner (did I just write that?). A strange and unjustly forgotten gem to be sure.

Brian Eno Series, #6: Brian Eno- Ambient 1: Music for Airports (1978) MP3 & FLAC

One of the most intriguing aspects of Brian Eno's Ambient work is its acknowledgment of the functionality of art rather than simply its purpose. Traditionally, a work of art assumes an engaged audience; in other words, the purpose (and perceived value) of an artwork relates to its status as an object of aesthetic and/or intellectual contemplation. All of the reviews I've written (and will write) for this blog operate on this assumption. However, Eno's Ambient work attempts to explore the functionality of an artwork. To do so, Eno hit on the idea of a form of music that would be complex enough to reward the contemplative listener at louder volumes, but would, at lower volumes, function more as an acoustic texture or color, blending into the background of an environment, not as mere background noise but as a textural element creating the kind of ambiance a painting, a sculpture, or even a bookcase full of books lends to a space even when not an object of direct attention. Ambient 1: Music for Airports has much to offer the listener in terms of both purpose and function, so don't be fooled; this is very listenable and often very evocative music that is well worth your time.

Brian Eno Series, #5: Brian Eno & David Byrne- My Life in the Bush of Ghosts (1981) MP3 & FLAC

A hybrid work through and through, My Life in the Bush of Ghosts revolutionized the concept of "World" music by exploring what it could be rather than preaching what it should be. By wedding African-inspired percussion (sometimes played with found objects such as a frying pan) to Funk-inspired compositions, as well as utilizing a vast array of vocal samples (also groundbreaking), Brian Eno and David Byrne carry out a relentless assault on the fetishistic notion of cultural purity.  Whereas previous "Western" attempts to engage the music of other cultures tended to treat these music forms as museum artifacts, Eno & Byrne highlight the fact that all culture is in some sense a mash-up, constantly in conversation with other cultures and therefore perpetually in flux. While this is heresy to preservationists, what it does is open our ears to the limitless possibilities of such conversations. My Life in the Bush of Ghosts was one of the first pop recordings to borrow freely and explicitly from multiple cultural sources in the effort to create something new, something unforeseen. In doing so, it laid the groundwork for, among other things, Paul Simon's next muse and all the Vampire Weekends of the future.

Brian Eno Series, #4: David Bowie- Low (1977) Ryko Au20 Edition (Gold Disc) MP3 & FLAC

"Sometimes you get so lonely; sometimes you get nowhere. I've lived all over the world; I've left every place."

Low, the first installment of Bowie's so-called "Berlin Trilogy," marks the culmination of his metamorphosis from polygendered Glam-Rock icon to cool maestro of avant-pop, and when listening to this album, it's hard to believe that it is only three years removed from the Glam-meets-Cabaret of Aladdin Sane. Meanwhile, Brian Eno was undergoing his own metamorphosis, recording the last of his "pop" albums, the transitional Before and After Science, while collaborating with Bowie on these sessions in Berlin. Not unlike Eno's album, Low is comprised of two distinct halves: jagged guitar-pop married to Kraftwerk-inspired synthetics and dark, atmospheric Eno-esque ambient electronic pieces. It is evident throughout the album that Eno brings out the best in Bowie, allowing him to indulge in the kind of experimentalism that his Ziggy persona made impossible, and in the process, they come up with the blueprint for the dreams of a thousand Post-Punk bands to come.

Brian Eno Series, #3: Brian Eno- Before and After Science (1977) MP3 & FLAC

"It will shine and it will shudder, as I guide it with my rudder, on its metalled ways."

While the first half of Before and After Science still bears faint traces of the avant Glam-Rock of Eno's early solo albums, the second half is clearly grounded in his burgeoning interest in ambient music. While this prevents the album from knitting together as an organic whole, it is, nevertheless, Eno's most diverse and forward looking "pop" album (and his last of the 70s). This is partly due to having reportedly recorded over a hundred tracks during the sessions for the album, as well as to Eno's unusual production technique, in which assembled tracks were completed by eliminating layers of sound rather than the more traditional approach of taking a basic structure and adding layers of sound. While not quite as essential as Eno's first three solo albums, Before and After Science is far more indicative of where Eno's restless muse was heading next.

Brian Eno Series, #2: Brian Eno- Small Craft on a Milk Sea (2010) Limited Ed. Box (Bonus Disc) MP3 & FLAC

I'm not sure whether Small Craft on a Milk Sea is best described as a return to form for Brian Eno or a case of self-reflection on his groundbreaking 70s ambient work coupled with a nod to contemporary Electronic music. Whichever it is (and why can't it be both?), this album pleasantly surprised me, especially given that it is, in part, comprised of some rejected soundtrack compositions. When Small Craft on a Milk Sea tries to sound contemporary (a move which more often than not makes an album sound dated), it tends to go percussive, really percussive compared to the more obviously Eno-esque ambient tracks. Occasionally, this undermines the album's cohesiveness; however, the highlights manage to do Eno's back-catalog justice, making this more than just another easily forgotten release by an elder-statesman of sound manipulation. The

Brian Eno Series, #1: Roxy Music- S/T (1972) MP3 & FLAC

"At last the crimson chord cascade, to shower dry cordials within. Too late to leap the chocolate gate, pale fountains fizzing forth pink gin."

It is easy to underestimate just how original Roxy Music's debut must have sounded in the context of the London Glam scene of 1972. Post-Modern in approach before the term was ever coined, balanced precariously on a combustible set of internal contradictions, Roxy Music, along with Bowie, forged a version of Glam-Rock that had more on its mind than lipstick and eyeliner; rather they endeavored to twist Rock n' Roll cliché into something artistically subversive. While Bryan Ferry plays the role of crooning ironic glamour god (in later years, he would dispose with the irony), Brian Eno's electronic interventions prevent the music from courting expectation, but just as integral to this heady mix is Andy Mackay's saxophone work. The inevitable tension between Ferry (sniffing stardom) and Eno (in it for the "art") is palpable throughout Roxy Music, but this is what drives the album toward greatness- each song teetering on the knife's edge of accessibility and experimentation.

Why Brian Eno Quit Roxy Music

This fine bit of Rock and Roll Revisionist Theater is brought to you by Brian Walsby.   
Visit his blog:   introverted loudmouth

Click on the image 2x for easy reading.

"I am Bryan Ferry, bitches!!"

Coming Soon- Brian Eno: The Series

In anticipation of The Killing Moon's upcoming series of Brian Eno (and related) posts, here's some live MGMT doing a song from Congratulations:



Don't worry, I'll mix in other posts, so it won't be all Eno all the time...

Roxy Music- "Virginia Plain" Video (1972) Live, Top of the Pops

Clips from Top of the Pops usually amount to five minutes of bad lip-syncing on a set that looks something like a cheap high-school prom, but this clip of Roxy Music back in the day decked out in all their wonderful glam attitude and excess is fucking sublime. Check out Brian Eno on the toggle box: