When I was 15 / 16 I had quite a collection of albums that were, for want of a better word, really weird.
How about Fripp and Eno's (No Pussyfooting)? Two long pieces of guitar drones and synth noises. I loved it.
I recently dug out another Eno related album - After The Heat, the second album he recorded with the German duo Cluster, and the one with three
of Eno’s best (and oddest) songs.
As
good as the instrumentals are, and they are all very lovely indeed (tracks like
“The Shade” or the very pretty “Old Land” are truly excellent), it’s the three
songs that dominate this record.
“The
Belldog” is as lush and as rounded as an Eno song ever was. The delightfully
burbling synths really compliment Eno’s excellent vocals and the ever so pretty
descending piano lines are wonderful.
On
the other hand, “Broken Head” is weird and dark and foreboding, and is equally
as good as “The Belldog” but just in an entirely different way. In a way it almost
prefigures the dark and squelchy sound of records like Nerve Net.
Then
we have the sheer oddness of “Tzima N’Arki” – adding all those backwards lines
from “Kings Lead Hat” to an extremely jerky rhythm track (with the King of
German weirdoes Holger Czukay on bass) and the end result is one of the
strangest tracks to close an album ever.
But
it’s all rather marvelous - totally unlike anything else. I first heard this record in my mid teens and although it partly baffled me,
it intrigued and fascinated me too. It would be nice to think that other 16
year olds might discover this album, but these days I wonder if many would
listen to something so leftfield…
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