4. Brian EnoAnother Green World
I was a massive Eno fan from the first two Roxy Music albums. When he left Roxy, I went out and bought Here Come The Warm Jets in 1973, and then a year later Taking Tiger Mountain (By Strategy). I fucking love those two albums. They’re almost like proto punk albums, especially …Warm Jets. And then came Another Green World. The weirdest thing is that it’s almost like this album preempted his future. If you listen to the title track, which is one of my favorites, or the opening track, ‘Sky Saw’, it’s almost a premonition of what he’s going to do on My Life In The Bush Of Ghosts many years later.
I think there are about only five tracks with vocals, the rest are instrumentals, but that was such a clever thing because as a kid the lyrics would bring you in, and then you’d let the ambient stuff just absorb you. The fact that these beautiful pieces of music were all short as well – they all became just part of it, these beautiful, relaxing things. I later heard that Bowie decided to work with him after he heard this album. What really does it for me is that it’s the album that encapsulates what he did before and what he was about to do all in one moment.
The artwork had a big influence on me. It was quite different. It still stands out differently to anything Eno has done. And later you find out it’s by some mate of his in college. I remember when I was doing my school leaving certificate, I had to do design and imaginative composition. I based it on Eno’s cover and I got an A+. If that album was the result of his Oblique Strategies and he was pulling those cards, then he had one of his greatest hands. Or, as Eno would say, one of his biggest bluffs. You know, the good thing about Brian is such he’s such a brain. He’s such an extraordinary talent and probably the greatest producer of all time.
