Brian Eno
Foreverandevernomore
(UMC)

THIS is the ambient pioneer, producer and artist’s 22nd solo album and his first vocal song-based work since 2005’s Another Day On Earth.

It has a focus on environmental and geopolitical concerns but also Eno’s musical progression, meditation and a questioning approach to a culture. 

On the album he is joined by his brother Roger Eno on piano and daughter Darla Eno on vocals, with programming from Peter Chilvers, and Jon Hopkins and Leo Abrahams on post-production work, guitar and synth work.

Overall the sound is surreal, poetic and dreamlike, mainly beatless. Vocal treatments include extensive pitch shifting, time stretching, use of Vocoder, reverberation room placements and tonal processing, among many other techniques.

As a go-to producer for the likes of U2, Bowie, Talking Heads, Roxy Music and Coldplay, Eno’s strategy is to avoid cliche and react against the norm. The work has stood the test of time and so too have his own free thinking creations.

The album opens up with Who Gives a Thought. Haunting, majestically and slow, it sets the scene for the album. Semi-sung, a semi-meditation, Eno’s vocal tone is rich and deep.

“Who gives a thought about the fireflies,” he sings.

We Let It In is a lament built around arching bass, distant whispered synth chords and pitch-shifted vocals that build into a cry for humanity and urgent ecological change. A mixture of tragedy and optimism. The overall intention is more than met.

Likewise Icarus or Bleriot questions the listener to take a new path. But Eno’s approach is rarely a political preach or a call to direct action.

He said of the album in a recent statement: “Like everybody else except, apparently, most of the governments of the world, I’ve been thinking about our narrowing, precarious future, and this music grew out of those thoughts.

“Perhaps it’s more accurate to say I’ve been feeling about it … and the music grew out of the feelings. Those of us who share those feelings are aware that the world is changing at a super-rapid rate, and that large parts of it are disappearing forever … hence the album title.”

Garden of Stars evokes a near-apocalyptic musical landscape as the vocal recording winds around radio static drama combined with stabs of synth atmospheres.

On the purely instrumental track, Inclusion, the violin and viola-playing of Marina Moore is deployed around ancient mysticism influences. Midway comes the highlight, There Were Bells, a funereal-like lament for planet Earth. Melodically it’s a triumph with optimistic bursts of high chords.

Eno premiered the track during a performance at the Acropolis in Athens in August 2021 on a day when a heatwave and wildfires besieged the city.

“I thought, here we are at the birthplace of Western civilisation, probably witnessing the end of it,” he said at the time.

The album closes with Making Gardens Out Of Silence In An Uncanny Valley, originally included in an audio installation in 2021 — Eno’s contribution to the London Serpentine’s long-term, interdisciplinary programme, addressing the ongoing climate emergency, Back To Earth.

Using his own generative software sounds from Bloom, the track gently winds around slow, ambient piano bells and heavily processed Vocoder vocal techniques. Drifting off, always undefined. As if the music had flowered then wilted into a fitting natural end.

Eno continues to be a vital force to be reckoned with, relevant and concerned. A contender for album of the year.