Tag: Electronica

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Thursday Afternoon

Brian Eno

Tracks: 1—Thursday Afternoon.

Tags: Ambient, Electronica, Minimalist, Drone

Release Date: October 1985

Rating: ★★★★★

When Compact Disc technology first became popular in the mid-1980s, it naturally became a challenge to electronic composer and experimental minimalist Brian Eno to come up with something unique to this new medium. At that time, a disc could easily handle up to 70 minutes of recording time. Eno’s trick was to create something that would be available exclusively on CD — a work consisting of a single, uninterrupted, ambient musical track lasting 61 minutes. Continue reading “Thursday Afternoon”

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Dali: The Endless Enigma

Various Artists

Tracks: 1 — Tuna Fishing (Michael Stearns); 2 — The Great Masturbator (Michel Huygen); 3 — Shades of Night Descending (Walter Holland); 4 — Inventions of the Monsters (Djam Karet); 5 — Impressions of Africa (Loren Nerell); 6 — Face of Mae West (Klaus Schulze); 7 — Assumpta Corpuscularia Lapislazulina (Bo Tomlyn); 8 — Birth of Liquid Desires (Steve Roach and Robert Rich); 9 — The Disintegration of the Persistence of Memory (Steve Roach); 10 — Rhinocerotic Figure of Phidas’ “Illisos” (Steve Roach and Robert Rich)

Tags: Electronica, New Age, Meditative

Release Date: 1990

Rating: ★★★★☆

I found this recording a few years after its 1990 release. It’s a tribute to the life and works of surrealist artist Salvador Dali; the composers turned to Dali’s paintings for their inspiration, and these tracks are the result of that labor of love. Like Dali’s own work, this album is not for everyone. There will be times when you will have to suspend your prejudices about music in order to hear what the composer was working to achieve  —  and that goes for everyone from lovers of classical music to aficionados of grunge metal. There are sounds and musical experiences in the collection to challenge anyone of any taste, and if you’re lucky, you’ll come away with appreciation if not pleasure in the experience. (Happily, none of it is as grotesque and inaccessible as Arnold Schoenberg’s Pierrot Lunaire, which I’m loathe to inflict upon anyone.) Continue reading “Dali: The Endless Enigma”

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Nerve Net

Brian Eno (Guest artists include Robert Fripp and Roger Eno)

TRACKS: 1—Fractal Zoom; 2—Wire Shock; 3—What Actually Happened?; 4—Pierre in Mist; 5—My Squelchy Life; 6—Juju Space Jazz; 7—The Roil, The Choke; 8—Ali Click; 9—Web; 10—Web (Lascaux Mix); 11—Decentre

RELEASE DATE: September 1, 1992

TAGS: Electronica, Horrible, Painful, Fuggeddabowdit

RATING: ☆☆☆☆☆

In the liner notes, Eno says, “This record is: like Paella, a self-contradictory mess, off balance, unlocked, dissonant, frenetic, evanescent, overheated, godless, clockless, reckless, squelchy, un-American, technically naïve, far too vague, derivative of everything, post cool, post root, crunchy, bluff, post world, post man, too much, not enough, revisionist, shamelessly exhibitionist, untailored, uncentered, clearly the work of a mind in distress, where-am-I music.” He is wrong on two counts: He left out “appalling,” and it certainly isn’t “music.” Continue reading “Nerve Net”