eno - taking tiger mountain (by strategy)

Eno's 1974 masterpiece Taking By Mountain (By Strategy) got a play the other day. 

 

Every single track, every single weird, loopy, bonkers, track is superb. Nothing is as you expect. None of the songs do what any other songs would ever do. Everything is just a little bit… skewed, off centre, just a little bit odd. 

 

In the middle of it all are Eno's calm, measured vocals. Even on the weirdest songs like "The Great Pretender" his voice is a reassuring presence, despite the frankly bizarre subject matter. Even on "Third Uncle" he only sounds mildly excited, despite the frenetic music all around him. There are a couple of places where Eno sounds a little unhinged - the vocal on "Judy's Jungle" for example is perhaps a little too jaunty and slips into wierdly freaky, but on the whole his voice is the calm centre of the madness. 

 

"Burning Airlines" is just strange. Oddly catchy, cheery almost, but undeniably strange.

 

"Judy's Jungle" is perhaps the most obviously odd, that loopy combination of kazoos, whistling, the pseudo military drums and the lyrics pretty much defies all rational explanation. 

 

"Fat Lady Of Limbourg" is a kind of spy story. I think. Superbly double tracked saxophones in the middle and a fairly sinister mood mixed with the utterly absurd - 'now we checked out this duck, Quack…'

 

"Mother Whale Eyeless" is perhaps my favourite, a sort of mish mash of war film imagery and maybe the story of Jonah, but set to a relatively straightforward tune. Though what all the stuff towards the end of the song is about is anyone's guess - 'take me, my little pastry mother, taiiike meeee'.

 

'The Great Pretender" closes side one with it's scary sci-fi sort of story about a mechanical bride. I think. I love the way the layers upon layers of music gradually build up, before all stopping in the middle leaving only the crickets, and then the relentless layering begins again. Very clever production.

 

"Third Uncle" is sort of punk as imagined by Prog rockers, but before anyone had actually thought of Punk. How Phil Manzanera can play this hard, this fast, and for five solid minutes is genuinely baffling. A tour de force in every sense. 

 

"Put A Straw Under Baby" is a nursery rhyme that would probably give kids nightmares. It cropped up on shuffle the other day while I was dropping the girls off in town - the cheerily out of tune Portsmouth Sinfonia genuinely offended the girls' very musical ears! I'm so used to this song that the out-of-tuneness simply doesn't register with me any more, and I can't imagine what the song would sound like if it was played 'properly'.

 

"True Wheel" - fantastic work from Manzanera, the guitar parts circulate around the song, and the words and vocal melody derive from a dream that Eno had (he also dreamt up Luana's black reptiles in "Driving Me Backwards" - he must have had VERY odd dreams…). I love the snatches of radio tuning that lead into…

 

"China My China" which is both extremely charming and rather disorientating at the same time - and how about that typewriter percussion? Wonderful.

 

And then we end with what is surely one of Eno's most relaxing songs ever. It takes it's time doesn't it? Half the song before the vocal is introduced, the singing as unhurried as the music, and then it seems to take about an hour or so to fade gradually into the distance as a chorus of Enos climb the mountain. 

 

Basically - What a fabulous record! I love it all.