Brian Eno - Another Green World (1975)

Dan:

Brian Eno came to the music world's attention in the early 1970s with a pair of albums that defied conventional standards for rock and roll. Here Come the Warm Jets (1973) and Taking Tiger Mountain (by Strategy) (1974) shocked my ears, yet they were hailed as breakthrough albums. Critics extolled their virtues; listeners like me struggled to understand their appeal. 

Abruptly, Eno made two albums in 1975 that no one could have predicted, given their immediate predecessors. Discreet Music marked the dawn of ambient music, created and recorded in the studio by one person at the controls of various electronic devices. The rear cover of Discreet Music provides a map of the signal paths for the various loops and processing, giving the listener a sense of the creative process. It's a beautiful album in many respects, but certainly not rock.

Eno's second 1975 release was Another Green World, which was not ambient but rather a hybrid of songs, group interplay, and electronic wizardry. It is also a beautiful album but much more engaging than Discreet Music. Contributing musicians include Phil Collins, Robert Fripp, Rod Melvin, Percy Jones, Paul Rudolph, Brian Turrington, and John Cale. They don't comprise an actual band but rather play parts in Eno's designs. Eno and Rhett Davies assembled the album as co-producers.

I've owned this album for over 40 years, beginning with the vinyl copy I bought at Spec's in Miami and now enjoying a remastered digital version. It never seems to age or lose its relevance. 

Another Green World's success and almost universal appeal lies in the way that the tracks are sequenced. Eno's singing voice is technically unimpressive, and it conveys an odd sense of emotional detachment. However, his songs alternate with instrumental interludes that connect the elements into a moody whole with lots of emotional weight. It's hard to think of any other album that pulls off such trickery to such marvelous effect. 

There are too many special moments on Another Green World to mention them all. Every song and transition seem to cast magical spells that prompt profound insights that don't depend on any literal understanding. "I'll Come Running" and "Everything Merges with the Night" come closest to being songs about something, but most lyrics conjure images of imaginary places. (This sense of place is key to enjoying Eno's ambient albums, especially Ambient 4 (On Land)). Each of the instrumental tracks, several less than two minutes long, is a miniature gem. 

Sonically, the whole album scores high marks - lots of juicy bass, judicious use of synthesizers, and terrific blending across the different instruments and devices. It's no mystery that Eno is as wonderful a producer as he is a musician. 

Steve:

I'll echo Dan's praise of Another Green World's sequencing. More than anything else, this album is presented as a piece of artwork, almost a series of musical paintings, and the pacing, length, and placement of these pieces is as important to the overall work as the pieces themselves. The highlights for me are the two instrumental pieces "In Dark Trees" and "The Big Ship", two songs whose music perfectly evokes the titles, and at a couple of minutes length apiece, seem like they could each go on forever. But that seems to be the key to all the best songs on this album - each track is a glimpse into one narrow aspect of this mystical Green World, and each glimpse could easily last an entire afternoon, but instead it merges into a new setting, like gazing out the window of a train passing through the countryside.

Of the vocal pieces, "St. Elmo's Fire" is a favorite, not least because it has a wonderful Robert Fripp guitar solo; "Golden Hours" is hypnotic with its odd evocation of ennui and/or dementia; elsewhere, the refrain of "I'll Come Running to Tie Your Shoe" comes across as a sincere pledge of love and devotion. But it is the interstitial instrumental pieces that really define Another Green World. Rarely had instrumental music been so visually oriented in the rock era.