Pitchfork

A spiritual big brother to theory-sopped music bloggers everywhere, the left-brained Brian Eno has always had a love affair with parameters. As the story goes, when Microsoft asked him to compose the Windows startup sound in the early 90s, they supplied a broadsheet of adjectives requesting the piece embody the phrases "universal," "optimistic," "emotional," and "futuristic," among others. The task of mediating those descriptors would be a lot to ask of any composition, never mind one that couldn't exceed 3.25 seconds in length. But to Eno, who happened to be stuck in a particularly barren creative rut, Microsoft's challenge looked a lot like a life preserver. By subsequently creating more than 75 pieces of music that fit the description (one of which was the familiar open-ended bell chime that probably sits somewhere between "Happy Birthday" and any number of Coke jingles on the master list of North America's most frequently heard pieces of music), Eno managed to shake himself out of a tree; not soon after, he was back to composing original material with his usual prolificacy.

But it's the rare puzzle solver who naturally gravitates to hazy, formless spaces, and Eno fits that description as well. Arguably as interested in the mysteries of methodology as he is in music, he's never been one to deny ambiguity's role in the creative process. Few composers have trusted music's nowhere qualities as fully as Eno-- that he's managed to maintain a logician's interrogative, purposeful edge while maintaining an output of sounds so enveloping they hang like a fog is one of his most interesting accomplishments.

Released under the Soundtracks container, these beautifully packaged reissues mark the third batch of Eno remasters from Astralwerks. Where the four discs released under the Early Works banner focused on Eno's vocal-driven compositions and those in Ambient Works on his most clearly defined ambient pieces, the thread tying these four 'soundtracks' together is more tenuous. Two of them (1978's Music for Films and the new compilation More Music From Films) include significant portions of music that were only ever conceived (but not used) as film soundtracks; 1985's Thursday Afternoon may have comprised the backing to one of Eno's video art installations, but it's built in the mirror image of his more famous ambient compositions, and has little in common with traditional soundtrack work.

So really, instead of lumping them together as soundtracks, it's probably more accurate to say these discs represent the point in the excavation where Eno's work starts to get a little trans-concept and certainly more difficult to classify. Containing music for films that never existed and music for existing places that, as far as the earthbound among us are concerned, might as well not, this is the sound of Eno playing with parameter and ambiguity's relationship to one another.

Music for Films is a collection of sparse, moody setpieces whose connections to actual films vary widely. Although more active and more heavily orchestrated than Eno's ambient compositions, its 18 tracks waft in and out in similarly unceremonious fashion. Some, such as "Inland Sea" and the "Sparrowful" trilogy, recall the fat-bodied analog keyboards of Discreet Music; others, like the percussive drone-piece "M386", counteract the melodic lulls with hammering nervous tension. Featuring songs recorded in different time periods with different musicians (Robert Fripp, John Cale, and a young Phil Collins are among the many who turn up here), it runs a little unevenly in spots, but it's nonetheless as evocative as anything Eno's ever done.

My favorite of these four reissues, 1983's Apollo-Atmospheres & Soundtracks is the only full-fledged film soundtrack of the lot. Co-written with brother Roger and Daniel Lanois (who provides radiant guitar work on tracks like "Silver Morning" and "Deep Blue Day") as the score to Al Reinert's documentary on the Apollo lunar landings, it represents Eno's attempt to slightly redress the popular media's glib and histrionic television presentation of the event. At times empty and disconnected ("Matta"), weightless and serene ("Drift") and completely beautiful ("An Ending (Ascent)"), it adheres to an internal logic that culminates with the suitably skin-crawling "Stars".

Featuring a single, mostly static track that hovers unchanged for the bulk of its 61 minutes, Thursday Afternoon is probably the best example of what Eno famously called a holographic work. Just as a small piece of a holograph contains the information of that holograph in its entirety, any small portion of this track also contains its essence as a whole. With its ambient drones and gently suspended piano notes, Thursday Afternoon unfurls like a blanket, and along with Music for Airports, remains one of Eno's most mystifying and durable works, a thing you could stare into forever without ever seeing through.

Finally, More Music For Films marks the first of Astralwerks' twelve reissues to potentially hold something new for existing Eno fans. Consisting of tracks taken from the rare, vinyl-only compilations Music for Films Directors' Edition and Music for Films Volume 2, it represents the first time that about half of these songs have ever been released on CD. As you might expect from a collection of lesser heard odds and sods, it's easily the most disjointed and sprawling disc of the bunch, but there are enough rewards and curiosities there to reward the diehards. Be warned though: due to a manufacturing error, many of the discs contain the music for "Approaching Taidu" as tracks 18 and 20, thus shortchanging the buyer of the scheduled track 18, "Climate Study". Astralwerks are currently working on a replacement version, so caveat emptor and all that.

Fans who've had the opportunity to A/B any of the old CD pressings to the first eight reissues in this series already know how good the remastering job is, but it bears repeating one last time. Not only are the small details now significantly more vivid, but the overall levels have been adjusted as well. To me, these feel definitive, the pressings that these records have always deserved, and it's nice to be able to hear them for the first time again.

 

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