An argument could be made - and I’ve made it - that
Brian Eno is the most pivotal artist of the rock era. If one lays his output on
a graph with music history it seems like he has been constantly either breaking
up the past or predicting the future. His work with Roxy Music took a hatchet
to rock and prog convention, making concept over technique a willful and
meaningful choice. His first four solo albums played with the idea that pop
music could be more challenging than we had been led to believe. Combining a
love for rhythm, heavy beats, and prog instrumentation with avant production he
created a body of work that stands up well next to Bowie and Can as the tip of
the spear of what might have been called cutting edge in the mid-1970’s. With Before And After Science he reached a
new level of tea leaf reading. Released in 1977, this album is split into two
parts: side A is angular, joyous proto-New Wave, and side B is a gentle and
beautiful preamble to his ambient period which would preoccupy the next decade
or so of his solo releases. This album took Eno two years to complete, and the
ten songs included were whittled down from one hundred he wrote during this
period. Each one of the chosen songs feels momentous and integral to the whole.
Also relevant to Before And After Science is the fact that it was the first album in
which Eno employed his recently invented Oblique
Strategies cards. These production tools were a series of “oracle
cards” which when drawn from a deck at random would make suggestions like “Go
slowly all the way round the outside.” Eno and his fellow musicians would
attempt to act on these instructions without question. This method of creation shares
DNA with William Burroughs and Brion Gysin’s Cut Up method of writing. There was intentional art, and
there was entrusting the process to the whim of the universe, and each of these
ideas was given equal merit. The result was magnificent as nothing on Before And After Science is predictable
and everything sounds new and unexpected.
Opening with the chaotic rhythms and phased
vocals of "No One Receiving"
we are immediately thrown into a woozy world of off-kilter cadences
that seem to come out of the mix like lead instruments instead of their usual
background position. With accompaniment by members of Cluster, Brand X, King
Crimson, Can and Roxy Music among others, Eno finds the perfect musicians for
his vision. With minimal instrumentation he creates a symphonic version of rock
music. Infallible melodies are coaxed out of the barest use of drums, bass and
synths. No matter how carefully one examines the songs and their
instrumentation there remains a certain magical Eno-ness to each number that
gives it immediate and permanent mnemonic properties. You can’t exactly tell
why, but they live in your head forever. "Kurt’s Rejoinder" will make you feel like you are in
a pop music house of mirrors as synths soar above crazy time signatures with
unforgettable Lewis Carroll-like lyrics. Track four, "Energy Fools The Magician," is
the first hint of the ambience to come - a slinky instrumental led by Percy
Jones’ slippery bassline and Fred Frith’s spooky guitar. Side One comes to a
close with what I have always considered one of the first punk songs. "King’s Lead Hat" (an
anagram for Talking Heads, whom he had just seen for the first time and would
go on to produce) storms out of the gates with Andy Fraser’s crashing drums,
marching handclaps, and clanging metal, and is punctuated by a deranged Fripp
guitar solo. It bristles with spiky energy that would have fit in on a Magazine
or Buzzcocks album.
If side A is a sonic report on rock’s
contemporaneous state, side two is a never ending dream balm. Faultlessly
melodic, "Here He Comes" is
a beautiful and simple song with Phil Manzanera’s guitar and Paul Rudolph’s
fretless bass solo playing off each other ecstatically. As side B progresses,
we can hear Eno working his way toward ambiance. "Julie With" is a whisper of a song whose lyrics evoke
beauty, eroticism and dread equally. Nothing but sparse keyboards, droning
guitar and bass provide the gentle background. Eno intones "I am on an
open sea, just drifting as the hours go slowly by/ Julie with her open blouse
is gazing up into the empty sky."
It is the audio equivalent of a Renoir painting - hazy, dreamlike, lovely. The
album closes with the sublime "Spider And I" which finds Eno
alone with synth waves, moody bass and the lines "We sleep in the
morning, we dream of a ship that sails away…a thousand miles away." Eno’s muse was about to set
sail. When Eno followed this album with more than half a dozen contemplative
instrumental albums which plumbed the quiet recesses of modern art, it should
have surprised no one at all. Side two of Before
And After Science sounds like a man quietly slipping under the inky surface
of his own artistic impulses with no intention of breaking the surface anytime
soon. It is a sublimely quiet and singular listening experience. My highest
endorsement is that for years I would go to sleep to side two of Before And
After Science, and I never had any nightmares.
- Paul Epstein
An argument could be made - and I’ve made it - that
Brian Eno is the most pivotal artist of the rock era. If one lays his output on
a graph with music history it seems like he has been constantly either breaking
up the past or predicting the future. His work with Roxy Music took a hatchet
to rock and prog convention, making concept over technique a willful and
meaningful choice. His first four solo albums played with the idea that pop
music could be more challenging than we had been led to believe. Combining a
love for rhythm, heavy beats, and prog instrumentation with avant production he
created a body of work that stands up well next to Bowie and Can as the tip of
the spear of what might have been called cutting edge in the mid-1970’s. With Before And After Science he reached a
new level of tea leaf reading. Released in 1977, this album is split into two
parts: side A is angular, joyous proto-New Wave, and side B is a gentle and
beautiful preamble to his ambient period which would preoccupy the next decade
or so of his solo releases. This album took Eno two years to complete, and the
ten songs included were whittled down from one hundred he wrote during this
period. Each one of the chosen songs feels momentous and integral to the whole.
Also relevant to Before And After Science is the fact that it was the first album in
which Eno employed his recently invented Oblique
Strategies cards. These production tools were a series of “oracle
cards” which when drawn from a deck at random would make suggestions like “Go
slowly all the way round the outside.” Eno and his fellow musicians would
attempt to act on these instructions without question. This method of creation shares
DNA with William Burroughs and Brion Gysin’s Cut Up method of writing. There was intentional art, and
there was entrusting the process to the whim of the universe, and each of these
ideas was given equal merit. The result was magnificent as nothing on Before And After Science is predictable
and everything sounds new and unexpected.
Opening with the chaotic rhythms and phased
vocals of "No One Receiving"
we are immediately thrown into a woozy world of off-kilter cadences
that seem to come out of the mix like lead instruments instead of their usual
background position. With accompaniment by members of Cluster, Brand X, King
Crimson, Can and Roxy Music among others, Eno finds the perfect musicians for
his vision. With minimal instrumentation he creates a symphonic version of rock
music. Infallible melodies are coaxed out of the barest use of drums, bass and
synths. No matter how carefully one examines the songs and their
instrumentation there remains a certain magical Eno-ness to each number that
gives it immediate and permanent mnemonic properties. You can’t exactly tell
why, but they live in your head forever. "Kurt’s Rejoinder" will make you feel like you are in
a pop music house of mirrors as synths soar above crazy time signatures with
unforgettable Lewis Carroll-like lyrics. Track four, "Energy Fools The Magician," is
the first hint of the ambience to come - a slinky instrumental led by Percy
Jones’ slippery bassline and Fred Frith’s spooky guitar. Side One comes to a
close with what I have always considered one of the first punk songs. "King’s Lead Hat" (an
anagram for Talking Heads, whom he had just seen for the first time and would
go on to produce) storms out of the gates with Andy Fraser’s crashing drums,
marching handclaps, and clanging metal, and is punctuated by a deranged Fripp
guitar solo. It bristles with spiky energy that would have fit in on a Magazine
or Buzzcocks album.
If side A is a sonic report on rock’s
contemporaneous state, side two is a never ending dream balm. Faultlessly
melodic, "Here He Comes" is
a beautiful and simple song with Phil Manzanera’s guitar and Paul Rudolph’s
fretless bass solo playing off each other ecstatically. As side B progresses,
we can hear Eno working his way toward ambiance. "Julie With" is a whisper of a song whose lyrics evoke
beauty, eroticism and dread equally. Nothing but sparse keyboards, droning
guitar and bass provide the gentle background. Eno intones "I am on an
open sea, just drifting as the hours go slowly by/ Julie with her open blouse
is gazing up into the empty sky."
It is the audio equivalent of a Renoir painting - hazy, dreamlike, lovely. The
album closes with the sublime "Spider And I" which finds Eno
alone with synth waves, moody bass and the lines "We sleep in the
morning, we dream of a ship that sails away…a thousand miles away." Eno’s muse was about to set
sail. When Eno followed this album with more than half a dozen contemplative
instrumental albums which plumbed the quiet recesses of modern art, it should
have surprised no one at all. Side two of Before
And After Science sounds like a man quietly slipping under the inky surface
of his own artistic impulses with no intention of breaking the surface anytime
soon. It is a sublimely quiet and singular listening experience. My highest
endorsement is that for years I would go to sleep to side two of Before And
After Science, and I never had any nightmares.
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