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Rating: Sounds Out of Place,
or How to Capture the Mountain Tiger with the Oblique Strategy
That Brian Eno was a genius, we had already understood from the time of Roxy Music and the way he reinvented their sound behind Bryan Ferry's back. It then happened that Ferry grew weary of that movement behind him and after various furious arguments, he invited Eno to the emergency exit, so the Roxy Music were never the same, and the genius of electronics set off not alone but in good company (Phil Collins, Phil Manzanera, Robert Wyatt, and Andy MacKay were with him) towards a path that led him to an artistic renewal more significant than the Roxy ever achieved in the following years. This man has the merit (and blame) of having "invented" ambient and aleatory music, and it's for albums like "Music For Airports" or "Discreet Music" that he's remembered, but before "boring" us with long instrumental suites and more or less daring experiments, and especially before producing U2, he released a "rock" tetralogy, if it can be called that (and it can't) which approaches in a speculative and personal way the various genres from glam to ambient.
Today we talk about "Taking Tiger Mountain (By Strategy)", Eno's second solo album, released in 1974. The rock element is still very present but is continuously ridiculed, and Eno uses all the instruments at his disposal to mock its function: the songs keep escaping from a fixed structure, we are surprised by the sudden entries of choirs and symphonic inspirations, the synthesizers work precisely on slide guitars... this is just part of what we can find in the ten songs. Eno's voice is the first thing that keeps changing: first, it's very high ("Back In The Judy's Jungle"), then tomb-like ("The Great Pretender"); if in some tracks we have solemn and oriental-inspired movements ("The Fat Lady Of Limbourg", "China My China"), in "The Third Uncle" we find ourselves overwhelmed by incendiary and robotic punk. In a single album, we move from the lullaby of "Put A Straw Under Baby" to the synthetic waltz of "Put A Straw Under Baby" and again to the choral sweetness... always of "Put A Straw Under Baby"! Logically, we could say that Eno's message is that pop-rock as we knew it is ending its vital functions and that the only way to give it energy is to infuse it with the sap of electronics and compositional and methodical upheaval (the so-called oblique strategies)... but one wonders if after the treatment it is still rock. The reviewer and critic should not assume the responsibility, and the arrogance, of the answer: the English artist already takes care of it with "The True Wheel", a track that summarizes all the sounds and suggestions of the album. We know we are at a turning point.
It becomes pointless to talk about everything that precedes and follows Eno's work (punk iconoclasm, prog technicality, dance detachment, ambient minimalism, and collaboration with Bowie and Iggy Pop) when all the questions and anxieties of this musical panorama of extreme changes fade into the piano lightness of "Taking Tiger Mountain," the zen poetry that closes this masterpiece. If by "mountain tiger" we mean something like an embryonic imagination, which does not yet exist, and I don't mean a chimera and a utopia, but which can really exist and will exist and will transform, then we can say that the eccentric Brian Peter George St. John le Baptiste de la Salle Eno with his oblique strategies has captured this something in a net that escapes any musical definition and classification.
fromPut A Straw Under Baby"
"Let the corridors echo,
As the dark places grow
Hear Superior's footsteps
On the landing below.
There's a place in the orchard
Where no-one dare go
The last one who went there
Turned into a crow
Tracklist Lyrics and Videos
01 Burning Airlines Give You So Much More (03:15)
When I got back home I found a message on the door
Sweet Regina's gone to China crosslegged on the floor
Of a burning jet that's smoothly flying
Burning airlines give you so much more
How does she intend to live when she's in far Cathay
I somehow can't imagine her just planting rice all day
Maybe she will do a bit of spying
With microcameras hidden in her hair
I guess Regina's on a plane a Newsweek on her knees
While miles below the curlews call from strangely stunted trees
The painted sage sits just as though he's flying
Regina's jet disturbs his wispy beard.
When you reach Kyoto send a postcard if you can
And please convey my fond regards to Chih-Hao's girl Yu-Lan
I heard a rumour they were getting married
But someone left the papers in Japan.
Left them in Japan.
03 The Fat Lady of Limbourg (05:05)
Well, I rang up Pantucci,
Spoke to Lu-chi,
I gave them all
They needed to know.
If affairs are proceeding
As we're expecting,
Soon enough the weak spots will show.
I assume you understand that we have options on your time,
And will ditch you in the harbour if we must:
But if it all works out nicely,
You'll get the bonus you deserve
From doctors we trust.
The Fat Lady of Limbourg
Looked at the samples that we sent
And furrowed her brow.
You would never believe that
She'd tasted royalty and fame
If you saw her now.
But her sense of taste is such that she'll distinguish with her tongue
The subtleties a spectrograph would miss,
And announce her decision,
While demanding her reward:
The jellyfish kiss.
Now we checked out this duck quack
Who laid a big egg, oh so black
It shone just like gold.
And the kids from the city,
Finding it pretty, took it home,
And there it was sold.
It was changing hands for weeks till someone left it by their fire
And it melted to a puddle on the floor:
For it was only a candle, a Roman scandal oh oh oh,
Now it's a pool.
That's what we're paid for
That's what we're paid for
That's what we're paid for here.
05 The Great Pretender (05:10)
Monica sighed
Rolled on her side
She was so impressed that she just surrendered
She was moved by his wheels
She was just up from Wales
He was fueled by her coals and he was coming to catch her
Lose the sense of time
Nail down the blinds
And in the succulent dark there's a sense of ending
Joking aside
The mechanical bride
Has fallen prey to the Great Pretender.
Let me just point out discreetly
Though you never learn
All those tawdry late night weepies
I could make you weep more cheaply
As the empty moon enamels
Monica with spoons and candles
Bangs around without the light on
Furniture to get it right on
Settled in a homely fish pool
Hung with little eels
Often thinks that travel widens
'Stay at home, the trout obliges'
Monica sighed
Rolled on to her side
She was so impressed that she just surrendered.
06 Third Uncle (05:01)
There are tins
There was pork
There are legs
There are sharks
There was John
There are cliffs
There was mother
There's a poker
There was you
Then there was you.
There are scenes
There are blues
There are boots
There are shoes
There are Turks
There are fools
They're in lockers
They're in schools
There in you
Then there was you.
Burn my fingers
Burn my toes
Burn my uncle
Burn his books
Burn his shoes
Cook the leather
Put it on me
Does it fit me
Or you?
It looks tight on you.
09 China My China (05:45)
In the haze of the morning, China sits on Eternity
And the opium farmers sell dreams to obscure fraternities
On the horizon the curtains are closing
Down in the orchard the aunties and uncles play their games
(like it seems they always have done)
In the blue distance the vertical offices bear their names
(like it seems they always have done)
Clocks ticking slowly, dividing the day up
These poor girls are such fun they know what God gave them fingers for
(to make percussion over solos)
China my China, I've wandered around and you're still here
(which I guess you should be proud of)
Your walls have enclosed you, have kept you at home for thousands of years
(but there's something I should tell you)
All the young boys are dressing like sailors
I remember a man who jumped out from a window over the bay
(there was hardly a raised eyebrow)
The coroner told me 'This kind of thing happens every day'
You see, from a pagoda, the world is so tidy.
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Other reviews
By fuggitivo
It’s love at first listen.
This album contains something primitively and insanely brilliant, stupid but crazy.
By luludia
This music really seems to come from another planet, that you almost manage to see those vaporized and happy androids whistling these little songs on the street.
I use it as an antidepressant. And it works.
