Brian Eno teams up with Underworld’s Karl Hyde for “Someday World”.

Eno, left in  Roxy Music.

Eno (left) with Bryan Fer­ry (cen­tre) in Roxy Music.

In 1979, Bri­an Eno sat down with a can of fizzy pop and a pack­et of Hula Hoops to idly watch an episode of Mork and Mindy. It was the last uncre­ative thing he ever did. Since then, he’s been for­ev­er doing some­thing.

My Life In The Bush Of Ghosts.

My Life In The Bush Of Ghosts.

After leav­ing Roxy Music and invent­ing ambi­ent music, he worked on Bowie’s sem­i­nal Berlin tril­o­gy, pro­duced three of Talk­ing Heads’ best albums, all of the best U2 albums, and pio­neered sam­pling with David Byrne with My Life in The Bush Of Ghosts back in 1981.

He’s worked on sound­tracks, instal­la­tions and albums with Gavin Bryars, Michael Nyman, Daniel Lanois, Robert Fripp, John Cale, Lau­rie Ander­son, Robert Wyatt and James Blake, as well as Dido, Cold­play and Microsoft. Despite the fact that he only works on a Mac.

In oth­er words, he’s both intim­i­dat­ing­ly pro­lif­ic, and con­scious­ly catholic in his choice of col­lab­o­ra­tors. His last two albums are hap­pi­ly more of the same.

His lat­est offer­ing is Some­day World, which he pro­duced with Underworld’s Karl Hyde. It’s an infec­tious­ly upbeat, anthemic album that will pro­vide the per­fect back­drop for your next trip in a car or on a train. But truth be told, even though it’s a lit­tle bit bet­ter than the 6.2 it gets from Pitch­fork  here, it is just a lit­tle underwhelming.

Bowie, Bono and Eno in '02.

Bowie, Bono and Eno in ’02.

Much more sat­is­fy­ing is his 2012 offer­ing, Lux. Hark­ing back to his ear­li­er, pure­ly ambi­ent work such as Music for Air­ports in 1978, or Apol­lo, the piece he did with his broth­er Roger and Daniel Lanois in 1983, Lux as its title sug­gests is both calm and inti­mate, yet warm and expan­sive. Some­how, even monumental.

It is yet anoth­er remark­able addi­tion to a stag­ger­ing back cat­a­logue. You can hear a sam­ple from Lux here.

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Debut Album from Savages Justifies All The Noise.

David Bowie.

David Bowie.

The lat­est nextbigth­ing from Britain are Sav­ages, and their much vaunt­ed debut album, Silence Your­self has just hit the shelves. And they’re this close to being faint­ly ridiculous.

They’re a four piece all girl retro post punk com­bo, and they take them­selves ter­ri­bly seriously.

Per­haps it’s unfair to cas­ti­gate them for that. All they’re doing is tak­ing their cue from Roxy and Bowie and their atti­tude at the onset of the 70s.

If you don’t take your­self and what you do seri­ous­ly how can you expect any­one else to? And not just the music. Everything.

The debut album from Savages.

The debut album from Savages.

But with Bowie and Roxy it was so much more colour­ful. And fun. Everything’s so black and white with Sav­ages. A bit of rouge could real­ly bright­en them up. If it weren’t for the actu­al music, the whole thing would be ever so slight­ly risible.

Hap­pi­ly though, Silence Your­self real­ly is an arrest­ing album.

Lead singer Jehn­ny Beth is open­ly chan­nelling Pat­ti Smith via Siouxsie Sioux. But although they sound every bit as fer­al as the Ban­shees, it’s all pro­duced in a much more planned and prac­ticed way.

They are com­ing at it from the same place as Cana­di­an noise mae­stros Metz, reviewed by me ear­li­er here.

Roxy circa '72

Roxy cir­ca ’72

It might ini­tial­ly appear like a wall of indus­tri­al noise made up of lay­ers of dis­so­nant feed­back, but it soon reveals itself as a care­ful­ly craft­ed and patient­ly prac­ticed col­lec­tion of metic­u­lous­ly struc­tured songs.

Which will prob­a­bly annoy some. Punk wasn’t sup­posed to be prac­ticed. But all it real­ly means is that Sav­ages and Metz are much bet­ter at it than most of those who went before.

The boys from Pitch­fork gave them an 8.7 here, and you can see them per­form their sin­gle Hus­bands on the Jools Hol­land Show here.

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