Passengers
Original Soundtracks 1

THE REVIEW

With "Original Soundtracks 1", the U2, accompanied by a spaceship called Brian Eno, literally take flight towards unknown sounds and dimensions. Space expands and takes on a thousand shapes and colors. Everything is unpredictable, and the rarefied, chiaroscuro-filled atmosphere makes this the most mysterious and intriguing album of the entire U2 production even more fascinating. In fact, this is the only TRUE U2+Eno album. It is no coincidence that a special name is created for the new supergroup, which is called, appropriately, Passengers.

"Original Soundtracks 1" is an absolutely unknown album, often even among the band's own fans. At first glance, it could be comfortably cataloged as the work in which the U2's experimentalism, which began with "Achtung Baby" and continued in '93 with the splendid "Zooropa", reached its absolute peak, ultimately completing the change of course begun in 1991. In reality, the album is completely out of any canon that U2 had accustomed us to in the past years (whether "Achtung Baby"'s revolution is considered or not), and it ends up completely detaching from the orbits around which every previous album had rotated.

"Original Soundtracks" is characterized by an explicitly electronic accent, this time truly protagonist, no longer in the background, with strong and absolutely non-random references to ambient atmospheres. It is not U2, it is not the same band, or at least it seems so. It is no accident that the songs within the album were originally conceived to become soundtracks for some films, but for one reason or another, almost all remained there, with the authors working on them as if writing for imaginary films. Among these, special mention must be made of "Your Blue Room", a nocturnal pearl of extraordinary beauty, unexpectedly revisited, among other things, during the last tour (though with doubtful results).

But how would it have gone if instead of "Passengers," U2 had been written on the cover? Would it have had greater visibility? Or did U2 fear christening an album that would have further led them to be unrecognized by the same market they had dominated for years? And furthermore, who can really say where U2's work ends and Brian Eno's begins within each single album produced for the Irish band since 1984? Since "The Unforgettable Fire" times, they are practically a group of six (with Dani Lanois). The only certain thing is that here Eno finally has free reign, and it shows. A perfect production cared for in every little detail makes the work a unique, great, inseparable, and untouchable flow; unthinkable to skip even a minimal track, at the risk of interrupting the beautiful ethereal, almost psychedelic, and at times even schizophrenic mood that the album creates.

Among these "passengers," there is also the collaboration of the late Luciano Pavarotti, protagonist of a beautiful duet with Bono in "Miss Sarajevo". In short: passengers, actors of a moment, of a transient moment between departure and arrival, and then who knows. Let's hope that one day or another they decide to come back around here.