BRIAN ENO: THE SHIP (2016)
1) The Ship; 2) Fickle Sun
(I); 3) Fickle Sun (II): The Hour Is Thin; 4) Fickle Sun (III): I'm Set Free.
Back to solo territory, and to (almost) pure
ambience again. The major difference being that this is the first of Eno's
ambient albums where his own voice serves as one of the ambient instruments:
the original plan was to simply have the whole thing as another «installation»,
but then, as Brian told Rolling Stone, he suddenly discovered that he was able
to sing the lowest notes of the piece due to the aging of his voice — and this
impressed him so much that he decided to add vocal support for the whole piece.
Which certainly does not make it «poppier» or more accessible — merely adds
another layer of sonic support to the picture.
ʽThe Shipʼ in question is the Titanic, of
course — the idea is that of a conceptual piece that is probably focused on the
adventures of the broken Titanic underwater (where «adventure» is to be
understood philosophically — in a sense, if nothing whatsoever happens to you,
this is by itself quite an adventure). The «lyrics» to the piece were not
written by Eno himself, but rather selected by him from a string of sentences
randomly generated by a Markov chain algorithm from a data pool that included a
passenger's account of the sinking of the boat, plus some translations of dirty
French songs from World War I for a change (although that last detail might be
a hoot — don't see any particularly dirty tidbits in the lyrics; perhaps the
algorithm included a modesty clause); fun, but ultimately pointless, in my
opinion — although, come to think of it, quite consistent with Eno's general
fatalism, belief in luck, and fascination for stuff like Tarot cards (and maybe
helpful in some way — he did rant,
for instance, about the greatness of the line "the hour is thin" that
was totally computer-generated, and, uh, he just might have something
there...).
Anyway, what's really good about The Ship is that its ambience is of a
stern, metallic character, with elements of the industrial style consistently
incorporated throughout — for ʽThe Shipʼ, you really do get the impression of
being placed underwater and watching the huge metal monster groan and moan
while tiny currents and occasional biological organisms swish and swoosh past
the metallic covering. Ropes and seams are creaking and straining, little gas
bursts escaping, and multiple vocal overdubs sound like a mix of ghost
apparitions and aural hallucinations. After twenty minutes of completely static
ambience, the first part of ʽFickle Sunʼ comes on in a much more dynamic manner
— as a slow anthem of death, with almost Gothic overtunes, gradually gaining in
intensity, with grinding feedback waves and quasi-orchestral pomp (reminiscent
of classic Coil, really) — and then, again, somewhat randomly, the same «suite»
continues as ʽPart 2ʼ (with a professional, but boring voiceover by Peter
Serafinowicz over a simple ambient piano melody) and as ʽPart 3ʼ, which, out of
the blue, is a very 1970s-sounding cover of The Velvet Underground's ʽI'm Set
Freeʼ, beautifully sung by Eno and once again featuring Leo Abrahams and Jon
Hopkins on additional instruments.
Fans of Eno's melodicity will most definitely
want the album for that cover — it is quite proverbially gorgeous, stripping
away all the lo-fi «ugliness» of the original and replacing it with a
paradisiac atmosphere: violins, violas, layers of keyboards, and, above all
else, the semblance of a beautiful tribute to Lou Reed, who, upon finally being
«set free», certainly does deserve an angelic tribute from the man who, after
all, forty years back, raised the «angelic standard» to nearly unreachable
heights: this is a fascinating cross-breed of Velvet Underground values with
Eno values, even if I still struggle to see its relationship with the bulk of
the album. But as for the bulk of the album, well, it's not generic Eno by all means, but it is
neither the beautiful ambient Eno nor the dark and mysterious
out-there-in-space ambient Eno, and I am not sure I am capable of squeezing yet
another ambient Eno in my storage room — I'd just say that the album is
sufficiently atmospheric to be a curious listen, but I can't say it really
gave me a whole new perspective on what it would be like to spend 100 years in
incorporeal form at the bottom of the ocean.
"I'd just say that the album is sufficiently atmospheric to be a curious listen, but I can't say it really gave me a whole new perspective on what it would be like to spend 100 years in incorporeal form at the bottom of the ocean."
ReplyDeleteJean-Michel Jarre's "En Attendant Cousteau" took care of that back in 1990 anyway.
Or British composer Gavin Bryars' "Sinking of the Titanic" perhaps?
DeleteMust mention Peter Bellamy's 'My Boy Jack' for the lost at sea theme.
Delete