BRIAN ENO: AMBIENT 4: ON LAND (1982)
1) Lizard Point; 2) The Lost
Day; 3) Tal Coat; 4) Shadow; 5) Lantern Marsh; 6) Unfamiliar Wind (Leeks Hills);
7) A Clearing; 8) Dunwich Beach, Autumn 1960.
Once you have travelled long enough in the
ambient microcosm, the realisation that not only does it not all sound the
same, but that it is actually capable of showing an impressionistic palette as
broad as anything else will eventually come. For instance, On Land may seem just like «another Eno ambient album» — but in
reality, it sounds like nothing he'd ever done previously. Most of his previous
ambient albums focused on minimalistic keyboard melodies — short, meaningful
phrases placed under a sonic microscope. On
Land, allegedly recorded over a period of three years, was the first
attempt to completely break away from that and go further, into the realm of
sheer sonic atmosphere that is more hum and noise than melody. Nothing
generally revolutionary about that — Krautrock authorities, among others, had
pioneered that approach a decade earlier — but somewhat revolutionary on a
personal level.
Above everything else, it would be interesting
to see how Eno, a guy with a very traditional-emotional understanding of music
deep in his heart, would handle such a transition to «non-melody»: and indeed,
he handles it in the most melodic way possible, if we mean «melody» in its
etymological sense, which is «limb-song», implying a harmonious and logical
combination of parts into a whole. If the action of On Land really takes place on land, this is a dark, creepy,
uncomfortable type of land — something in between the Forest of Mirkwood and the
Misty Mountains, if you pardon my resorting to Tolkien for a second — but also
a very naturalistic type of land, every bit as believable as Another Green World, even if this one
seems anything but green (and it is
no wonder that Eno would go from here straight on to Apollo Atmospheres).
It is curious, though, that many of these
tracks are actually named after various locations in England — ʽLizard Pointʼ,
ʽLantern Marshʼ, ʽLeeks Hillsʼ, etc. — implying that these are, after all,
musically transformed and deconstructed impressions of real landscapes that Eno
was familiar with; if so, this is definitely one of the gloomiest depictions of
non-industrial England ever put to tape, and one good reason to refuse
knighthood for Seigneur le Baptiste de la Salle if the issue ever comes up
(that and the man's unconcealed pornography fetish, of course). Even if nothing
much really happens on ʽLizard Pointʼ — basically just the wind blowing over
some humming synth tones — but midway through, the wind gets joined by ghostly
voices, as if it were carrying around the spirits of all those unfortunate who
happened to drown there (Lizard Point, the most southerly tip of England,
actually has a rather nasty history in that regard).
«Ghosts» are, of course, an almost obligatory
presence on almost any Eno ambient album, just because it is so easy to get
«ghost tones» out of your synthesizer — but, let's face it, the man has perfect
control over his ghosts, and a perfect understanding of what a ghost is all
about. Above all, a ghost is not something that is actually supposed to harass
you — a ghost usually just floats around, minding its own (rather mindless)
business, so neither on ʽLizard Pointʼ, nor on the somewhat less creepy, but
not less evocative, ʽLantern Marshʼ do these ghosts sound personally
intimidating — the ghosts on the ʽMarshʼ are just whistling and hustling past
you, creating an illusion of being in a hurry, when in reality they just spin
in circles. And in ʽUnfamiliar Windsʼ they just seem to huddle together and hum
their own ghostly little requiem, provided it makes sense for ghosts at all to
sing their own requiem.
Or maybe not their own. The final track of the album is ʽDunwich Beach, Autumn
1960ʼ — no idea what happened there in 1960, when Brian was just 12 years old
(but he did grow up in nearby Ipswich, so perhaps some childhood recollection
is involved), but Dunwich itself is a textbook example of the rise-and-fall
thing, having once been the capital of the Kindom of the East Angles and having
since then deteriorated into a depopulated village due to coastal erosion. The
track is as gloomy and fatalistic as (almost) everything else here, lonesome
droplets of electronic water trickling down the grooves to a mournful
electronic hum — and suggests that the entire On Land be taken as one huge mourn for something. A lost childhood,
a lost England, maybe a lost world or universe altogether, something that once
stood firm but now is only represented by echoes, murmurs, and wordless ghosts.
Once that understanding falls into place, On
Land really begins to work as a whole, and scores another non-triumphal
triumph for the man.
For the record, Jon Hassell, the famous trumpet
player, is present here on ʽShadowʼ, where his sporadic blows are almost
unrecognizably merged by Eno with the vague-fuzzy female vocal part; guitarist Michael
Brook is responsible for some of the mentioned «droplets» on ʽDunwich Beachʼ;
and various frogs, insects, and other organic compounds have also been credited
for contributing, although I am not so sure about the royalties. But don't get
any ideas — you are not going to get any «nature sounds» stuff here, because
everything is processed through the Enochip before getting back at you from
the speakers, so occasionally you might have a hard time distinguishing the
frogs from the trumpets, not to mention guitars from keyboards. Nothing is what
it seems, even if at first it may all seem like one big nothing.
This is my favorite ambient album of all Eno ambient albums. Yes, it even beats the Apollo one in terms of, er, its suitability as my-go-to-sleep album.
ReplyDeleteIn case of Apollo you can have a good sleep too unless you're still awake when those shitty pedal steels come up.
Now all jokes aside, I think this is in some way the essential ambient album. And thing do happen on those albums, musically I mean. Yes, even on Lustmord's records :)
p.s. This is Constantin from FB group, just skipped logging in this time.