Before and after Science

Indie Pop / Avant Pop / Muzyka alternatywna
premiera polska: 2009-08-03
kontynent: Europa
kraj: Anglia
opakowanie: plastikowe etui
opis:
Czwarty i ostatni z tzw. piosenkowych autorskich albumów Briana Eno. W kolejności albumy były wydawane następująco:
Here Come the Warm Jets (E.G. Records, 1973), Taking Tiger Mountain (By Strategy) (E.G. Records, 1974), Another Green World (E.G. Records, 1975) i Before and after Science (E.G. Records, 1977).
Piosenkowe albumy Briana Eno stanowią osobny gatunek od jego minimalistycznych, instrumentalnych awangardowych albumów muzyki ambient.
W latach 1977–1979, Brian Eno i David Bowie, pracując w Berlinie, nagrali tzw. „trylogię berlińską”. Albumy te są nominalnie albumami Bowiego: Low (1977), „Heroes” (1977) i Lodger (1979). Ten ostatni, wprawdzie nagrany w Szwajcarii, jest zaliczany jako „berliński”[6].
Eno również nagrał dwa duetowe albumy w latach 1972–1975 z Robertem Frippem, gitarzystą zespołu King Crimson: (No Pussyfooting) (1972-73) i Evening Star (1975). Robert Fripp wykonał jeden ze swoich najsłynniejszych zaciekłych pasaży solowych w utworze „King’s Lead Hat” na Before and after Science.

udiscovermusic.com
For record buyers, 1977 felt long and momentous. If you were on the “pro” side of the punk debate, the initial euphoria had been somewhat tempered by tabloid and/or physical abuse, and mixed feelings over Sex Pistols’ crossing into the mainstream with a performance on Top Of The Pops. Meanwhile, those on the “anti” side of the fence were bemused and outraged to find their favorite well-established artists dismissed as irrelevant dinosaurs – often, surprisingly, with little significant impact upon their long-term popularity. Either way, a palpable exhaustion had set in by the year’s end, which is where Brian Eno’s Before And After Science came in.

Whether they acknowledged it or not, punks and reactionaries alike needed a respite from the tumult. Brian Eno’s fourth solo album, originally released on the Polydor imprint in December 1977, surreptitiously pulled off the not-inconsiderable feat of uniting both factions as an almost incidental by-product of its casual otherness.

For punks, Eno carried a certain cachet as the outrageous rebel who generated blizzards of pointy noise with the early Roxy Music, while the top-tier musicianship of album guests the likes of Phil Collins and Percy Jones (at that point the seamless rhythm section of jazz-rockers Brand X) ensured that Before And After Science boasted a proficiency attractive to those who still sent in their nominations for the “best instrumentalist” polls in Melody Maker.

Side One of the original vinyl release – subtitled Fourteen Pictures, with reference to the album’s ten songs, plus the four subtle prints by artist Peter Schmidt which came with initial pressings – features a clutch of enigmatic but generally uptempo compositions. “No One Receiving” draws upon the numbed, swaying, and disconnected avant-funk (“Nobody sees us alone out here among the stars”) that characterized side one of David Bowie’s Low, which had been released in January 1977, with Eno as one of Bowie’s key collaborators. “Backwater,” amiable and remorselessly catchy, boasts a scuttling drum pattern by Jaki Liebezeit of Can, and could so easily have been a hit single had anyone thought to release it as such. (Oddly, it eventually surfaced as a single in 1986, nine years later.)

“Kurt’s Rejoinder” features a sample of avant-garde artist/poet Kurt Schwitters reciting his surrealist tract “Ursonate,” and finds Eno offhandedly assuming the role of dance caller: “Do the do-si-do, do the mirror man, do the Boston crab, and the allemande.” “Energy Fools The Magician,” a spacious instrumental in tense suspension, is underscored by Percy Jones’ flurry of pinging bass harmonics, while “King’s Lead Hat” – an anagram of Talking Heads, with whom Eno was in thrall at the time – is a pleasingly raucous word salad that wouldn’t have sounded out of place on his 1974 debut album, Here Come The Warm Jets (“The killer cycles, the killer hertz, the passage of my life is measured out in shirts”).

As for the subdued, meditative fare on Side Two, there could be no finer preface to the ambient experiments which Eno would pursue in succeeding years. Taken together, the five tracks constitute a consoling, weightless, “ocean music” suite (to paraphrase Eno himself). “The radio is silent, so are we,” Eno observes on the gorgeous reverie “Julie With…,” while Dieter Moebius and Hans-Joachim Roedelius of Cluster add the gentlest gravitas to “By This River” (“You talk to me as if from a distance”).

Topped and tailed by “Here He Comes” and “Spider And I,” Side Two of Before And After Science utilizes what, for Eno, are quite conventional, linear melodies. But in their understatement, a wellspring of implied emotion broils beneath the still surface.
By Oregano Rathbone

muzycy:
Brian Eno – śpiew, syntezatory (Minimoog, EMS Synthi AKS, Yamaha CS-80), gitary, syntezatory perkusyjne, pianina, instrumenty dęte blaszane, wibrafon, metallics (dźwięki metaliczne), dzwony (cowbell, handbell (ręczne), dzwony rurowe)
Paul Rudolph – gitary basowe, gitara rytmiczna
Phil Collins – perkusja (bębny)
Percy Jones – gitara basowa bezprogowa, analogowy delay gitary basowej
Rhett Davies – agong-gong and stick (agung, para wielkich drewnianych gongów filipińskich i kijek do uderzania, ewentualnie Chapman stick
Jaki Liebezeit – perkusja (bębny)
Dave Mattacks – perkusja (bębny)
Shirley Williams – brush timbales (kubańskie bębny od merengue)
Kurt Schwitters – śpiew
Fred Frith – gitary
Andy Fraser – perkusja (bębny)
Phil Manzanera – gitary
Robert Fripp – gitara
Hans-Joachim Roedelius – pianino
Dieter Moebius – gitara basowa, pianino
Bill MacCormick – gitara basowa
Brian Turrington – gitara basowa

utwory:
1. No One Receiving – 3:51
2. Backwater – 3:43
3. Kurt's Rejoinder – 2:53
4. Energy Fools the Magician (aranżacja Percy Jones/Brian Eno) – 2:05
5. King’s Lead Hat – 3:53
6. Here He Comes – 5:40
7. Julie With ... – 6:20
8. By This River (Eno, Hans-Joachim Roedelius, Dieter Moebius) – 3:03
9. Through Hollow Lands (For Harold Budd) (aranżacja Fred Frith/Brian Eno) – 3:54
10. Spider and I – 4:08

wydano: 2009-08-03 (1977)