Instrumental tracks like “Zawinul/Lava” (named for Weather Report keyboardist Joe Zawinul) and “Becalmed” are haunting mood pieces with slow-drip atmospheres. But despite the John Cagian aspect of Oblique Strategies, Eno arrived at an album that brought the worlds of song and ambience together.
Even if the card said “Emphasize the flaws” or “Do nothing for as long as possible.” He tells a story about “Spirits Drifting” in the Eno interview that runs on Monday. (The first album was Taking Tiger Mountain (By Strategy). This is the second album where Brian Eno employed his Oblique Strategy cards, conceived with artist Peter Schmidt. Here’s the 10 that I would consider essential. But there are subtle earth shakers later on as well. While some of my favorite songs are from later-period Eno albums, notably “And So Clear” and “Under” from Another Day on Earth and “Persis” from Drawn from Life, when looking for essential Eno, it’s natural to tend toward his earlier works. But no doubt Eno has made some nearly perfect albums, all of which remain influential. They can sometimes be uneven with moments of brilliance married to stretches of failed experiments that are conceptually challenging, but musically less engaging. He’s recorded and collaborated on dozens of albums over the years. He created an entire genre with the concept of Ambient Music and took avant-garde concepts into pop with artists like U2, Coldplay, Talking Heads and most notably, David Bowie on the Berlin trilogy of albums, Low, Heroes and Lodger. Beginning with Roxy Music in 1971, Eno has cut a subliminal swathe through music. On Echoes, there isn’t an artist who doesn’t cite him as an influence or inspiration and I suspect that across the greater music universe his impact is only slightly less.
Brian Eno is so deep in the DNA of modern music that it would take a lifetime to tease out all the strands.
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