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Brian Eno — The Drop
(Thirsty Ear thi 66032.2, 1997, CD)

The Drop Cover art

The Drop is Brian Eno's first true 'solo' album since 1992's Nerve Net and is immediately comparable to the 1975 masterpiece, Another Green World. The new album has thrown his legion of listeners an audible curve so to speak, since most fans expected a vocal work and received an instrumental album instead. Part of the mystery lies in the fake-out credits listed: no detailed technical information is included except for some 'assembly' performed by Ben Penner and Nick Robertson. The disguised clues point to a distinct lack of other musicians' participation. This leads the listener to extract a message of a subtle, calculated work done alone by the architect of ambiance. Song sequencing is somewhat unusual since there are sixteen short tracks plus one 30-plus minute closing piece. Each one is spread across multiple styles, occasionally ominous as heard on "But If" and "Hazard" (with its low frequency rumbling) or delicately fragile using keyboard/piano based themes as on "Cornered." Sometimes quirky rhythm tracks (almost the artist's signature) are used as on "Belgian Drop" and "Block Drop." According to the Eno website, the album's title changed every few weeks prior to release indicating there was no clear theme determined from the title. "Iced World" is the closing composition, easily noticeable since it seems to end, then swells and continues. The piece is notable if only its cyclic repetition and constant fluctuations in timbre within synth loops. While The Drop may not win any new converts to the church of collage sound, it will certainly befuddle and amuse older fans.

by Jeff Melton, Published 1998-02-01

"This is not ambient music," promised the pre-release advertisement. "Great!" I thought, somewhat sarcastically — which ambient style were they referring to? Well Eno goes and surprises us all by actually avoiding both. Now I know where the title originates: he "dropped" the album smack dab in the middle between the two poles. Similarities to Spinner and Nerve Net can be drawn, but where the latter was a full-blown urbane melting pot that mixed styles and approaches in an effervescent and desperate search for identity, The Drop is more like a stroll through the park with Eno's watercolor sketchbook. It finds him at the helm of just one DX7 keyboard and loads of his own programming ideas — there are no guests. What is so satisfying is that 25 years into his career he is still offering new twists and turns in his music. Until now he focused heavily on sound manipulation of textures in the studio. Here he seems to have done all the manipulation to the instrument itself, then simply recorded each piece live, bereft of any tricky studio magic at all, very much how a jazz project would be approached.  Well, an "ambient-jazz" one anyway. An electronic percussion backdrop supports the uncommonly (for him) melodious pieces. The big breakthrough here is in his use of actual melodic structures, those of the deceptively long-winded type that Mahavishnu Orchestra was famous for. (Eno claims their influence on this recording.) His exotic sense of clashing motifs creates some oblique harmonic events as the contrapuntal phrases collide against each other in a chromatic textural web. The resultant concoction is so engaging and convivial that it nearly cured my insufferable digita-phobia. Is this how aliens playing blissed out virtual jazz in an outer space bar of the 21st Century would sound? Perhaps. The Drop is that rare kind of work that inspires others to emulate, and stands up to anything he has ever produced hitherto. An ambient music's answer to Zappa's Jazz from Hell, by the Svengali of electronic illusionism.

by Mike Ezzo, Published 1998-02-01

Filed under: New releases, Issue 14, 1997 releases

Related artist(s): Brian Eno

More info
http://brianenoallsaints.bandcamp.com/album/the-drop-expanded-edition

 

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