Album Review - Brian Eno - Small Craft on a Milk Sea

While listening to Small Craft on a Milk Sea, I felt obliged to rediscoverer Brian Eno's most outstanding works as a solo artist, for that alone, thank you. I was already aware how great Here Come the Warm Jets is, but now I love Taking Tiger Mountain (By Strategy) and Another Green World as well. Still, his ambient work Ambient 1: Music for Airports can only manage to set me down to sleep. And out of the four classic albums mentioned before, Small Craft is probably most similar to the latter one. Both are ambient albums, which lack any kind of vocals, but Small Craft is more upbeat, at least in some parts, since it has a very marked strucutral line, which climaxes in tracks 4, 5 and 6. I've just finished watching James Cameron's Avatar, and those three songs make me relieve the most exciting scenes, that is how good the climax is, however, it is very short and happens early in the album's running time. From then on, the tracks start descending in rhythm until they become background music. I guess we shall praise this since it was probably the idea Brian had in mind when composing the album.

Then again, I am a fan of Brian's voice, and when he is not singing, I'm usually specting a "Becalmed" or an "An Ending (Ascent)", and none of these 16 tracks achieve the beauty effect of those two tracks, which whenever I happen to play them, I just have to stop what I'm doing, because those tracks grab me by the neck and force me to listen. I'll also go further ahead into giving two tips in order to enchance your listening experience of this album (no drugs included): one, read the track names, since they help you create some sort of picture or narrative in your head, and two, pump up the volume.

Brian Eno - 2 Kinds of Anger