Pioneering soundscape artist returns to his innovative ambient roots with minimal tones and maximum results
8/10
With Brian Eno, you don't start from the beginning, you delve. The man's back catalogue (due for a 'How To Buy' feature on this very website, very soon) is as vast as his mind and can be divided into three parts. Firstly his earlier quirky rock and pop era, fresh out of the constraints of Roxy Music and perhaps his most unfairly maligned and misunderstood. Secondly, his mid-period ambient period when his tonal, textured albums were seemingly being tailored for every medium such as films, land or airports. Thirdly, his mainly ambient installation series that rarely made the music stores upon release, remaining website exclusives of mythical proportions. It doesn't matter where you delve because Eno's career is fascinating - you just need to start somewhere. Here is as good a place as any.
For his second Warp release, Eno has traversed both of his second and third periods with the gorgeous ambient Lux. Fans of his shimmering Ambient series on Editions EG in the '70s and '80s, the Apollo album, The Shutov Assembly and Neroli will find solace on the four lengthy pieces here, all recorded for Turin's Great Gallery of the Palace of Veneria, a place with a name that already reflects the blissful esoteric music picked for a recent installation. Each of the four tracks is divided into segments of barely noticeable differences, all seamlessly merging into a calming milieu that functions as a restful opiate or a soporific alternative to your fellow bus passenger's braying or appalling taste in iPod fodder.
Four attractive cards or prints accompany the CD or vinyl for no reason, other than to make the product a little more tactile and your wall or desk space a wee bit more pastoral (as if you'd remove them from the packaging!). Ultimately, Lux is a sensory stimulation that, if it were a fragrance, might be heavy on verbena and rosemary and if it were an animal, an oversized recently-fed and therefore contented purring cat. Or both. Simplistic, absorbing and a lulling little treasure.
For information about Brian Eno's live shows, head to Allgigs here
8/10
For his second Warp release, Eno has traversed both of his second and third periods with the gorgeous ambient Lux. Fans of his shimmering Ambient series on Editions EG in the '70s and '80s, the Apollo album, The Shutov Assembly and Neroli will find solace on the four lengthy pieces here, all recorded for Turin's Great Gallery of the Palace of Veneria, a place with a name that already reflects the blissful esoteric music picked for a recent installation. Each of the four tracks is divided into segments of barely noticeable differences, all seamlessly merging into a calming milieu that functions as a restful opiate or a soporific alternative to your fellow bus passenger's braying or appalling taste in iPod fodder.
Four attractive cards or prints accompany the CD or vinyl for no reason, other than to make the product a little more tactile and your wall or desk space a wee bit more pastoral (as if you'd remove them from the packaging!). Ultimately, Lux is a sensory stimulation that, if it were a fragrance, might be heavy on verbena and rosemary and if it were an animal, an oversized recently-fed and therefore contented purring cat. Or both. Simplistic, absorbing and a lulling little treasure.
For information about Brian Eno's live shows, head to Allgigs here