Contact Brian Eno: Discreet Music (2015)

If The Shutov Assembly is reminiscent of Brian Eno's earlier "ambient" music projects dating back to Discreet Music (1975), it shouldn't be surprising. Recorded between 1985 and 1990, the atmospheric, slow-moving sound patterns are more, the artist contends, like paintings than music…

If The Shutov Assembly is reminiscent of Brian Eno's earlier "ambient" music projects dating back to Discreet Music (1975), it shouldn't be surprising. Recorded between 1985 and 1990, the atmospheric, slow-moving sound patterns are more, the artist contends, like paintings than music. The Shutov Assembly, dedicated to Russian painter Sergei Shutov, is, like the similar works in his catalog (he cites Music for Films, On Land, Music for Airports, Thursday Afternoon, and Nerve Net, as well as Discreet Music), as much a concept as a record.

If The Shutov Assembly is reminiscent of Brian Eno's earlier "ambient" music projects dating back to Discreet Music (1975), it shouldn't be surprising. Recorded between 1985 and 1990, the atmospheric, slow-moving sound patterns are more, the artist contends, like paintings than music. The Shutov Assembly, dedicated to Russian painter Sergei Shutov, is, like the similar works in his catalog (he cites Music for Films, On Land, Music for Airports, Thursday Afternoon, and Nerve Net, as well as Discreet Music), as much a concept as a record.

Brian Eno - Thursday Afternoon (1985) {2009 Virgin DSD Remaster}
EAC rip (secure mode) | FLAC (tracks)+CUE+LOG -> 250 Mb | MP3 @320 -> 145 Mb
Full Artwork @ 300 dpi (png) -> 27 Mb | 5% repair rar | DSD Remaster
© 1985, 2009 Virgin Records / Astralwerks | 50999 6 84537 2 5
Ambient / Electronic / Avant-Garde / Experimental

Brian Eno's Thursday Afternoon is included in his Original Masters "Soundtracks Works" edition as it is, after all, a soundtrack to a video that Eno himself made in 1984. It consists of seven practically immobile shots of a nude or semi-nude model filtered through a variety of video effects, shown "vertically" with the TV set turned on its right side. Thursday Afternoon debuted at a high profile art gallery in New York, and at that time Eno's cadre of boosters proclaimed that he was going to do for visual art what he'd already done for music.

Robert Fripp & Brian Eno - No Pussyfooting (1973) {2CD Set, Discipline Global Mobile DGM5007 rel 2008}
EAC rip (secure mode) | FLAC (tracks)+CUE+LOG -> 650 Mb | MP3 @320 -> 290 Mb
Full Artwork @ 300 dpi (jpg) -> 31 Mb | 5% repair rar | 24-bit remaster
© 1973, 2008 Opal / Discipline Global Mobile / RF | DGM5007
Rock / Electronic / Ambient / Experimental Ambient / Art Rock

At the same time Brian Eno was working on Here Come the Warm Jets, he was flexing his experimental muscle with this album of tape delay manipulation recorded with Robert Fripp. In a system later to be dubbed Frippertronics, Eno and Fripp set up two reel-to-reel tape decks that would allow audio elements to be added to a continuing tape loop, building up a dense layer of sound that slowly decayed as it turned around and around the deck's playback head. Fripp later soloed on top of this. No Pussyfooting represents the duo's initial experiments with this system, a side each.

Brian Eno - Reflection (2017) {Japan Ultimate HiQualityCD BRC-538 - First Press/External Bonus}
EAC rip (secure mode) | FLAC (tracks)+CUE+LOG -> 187 Mb | MP3 @320 -> 128 Mb
Full Artwork @ 600 dpi (png) -> 520 Mb | 5% repair rar
© 2017 Opal / Warp Records / Beat Records Japan | BRC-538
Electronic / Ambient / Avant-Garde / Experimental Ambient / Process-Generated Music

In 2016, as he was preparing for the release of Reflection, Brian Eno admitted that he wasn't quite sure what the term "ambient music" even means anymore. It's been used to describe everything from atmospheric techno to tense, foreboding sound sculptures. For him, it's always referred to generative compositions, unrestricted by time constraints or rhythmic structures, and often left to chance. Reflection continues with the type of albums he initiated with 1975's untouchable Discreet Music. The piece slowly unfolds over the course of an hour, with notes calmly being suspended in mid-air, only to drift away and pop up later at their leisure.

Brian Eno - Ambient 4, On Land (1982) {2009 Virgin DSD Remaster}
EAC rip (secure mode) | FLAC (tracks)+CUE+LOG -> 192 Mb | MP3 @320 -> 106 Mb
Full Artwork @ 300 dpi (png) -> 28 Mb | 5% repair rar | DSD Remaster
© 1982, 2009 Virgin Records / Astralwerks | 50999 6 84530 2 2
Ambient / Electronic / Avant-Garde / Experimental

On Land represented a significant move away from the strategies Brian Eno had employed in earlier ambient releases such as Discreet Music and Music for Airports. Instead of using a specific process to generate music with minimal interference from the composer, he here opts for a more gestural and intuitive approach, creating dreamy pictures of some specific geographical points or evocative memories of them. It's quite easy to imagine these works as soundtracks to mysterious footage of imprecisely glimpsed landscapes.