fragments; the song “Breaking Glass’’ is under two minutes long. Meanwhile, the flip side is adrift with sprawling ambient pieces—“Warszawa’’ and “Subterraneans’’ are both around six minutes long.
Even though most of the tracks on
Another Green World
had no lyrics, the album features some of Eno’s most poetic, evocative song titles. The titles served an important function; they were mental triggers that could set the imagination of the listener reeling in a certain direction. Each title—“In Dark Trees,” “The Big Ship,” “St Elmo’s Fire’’—offers an impressionistic image for the person listening. When you listen to an instrumental like “In Dark Trees,” it’s hard not to envisage dense forests, shadows, and fog. “Spirits Drifting’’ seems to suggest ghostly, eerie specters seeping out of the air.
Harold Budd, a kindred spirit to Eno who would soon collaborate with him on several albums, offered some insights on the importance of song titles. “The only thing I ever go into the studio with is a list of titles,” Budd said. “And if I really like the titles, I know it’s going to happen. And it does happen. That’s the way it goes. What a wonderful way to live, honestly. The titles, of course, are my version of poetry, I guess, or something like that. They don’t have a rhyme scheme or anything like that, but they’remostly images, and kind of little things that tend to paint or tint the tenor or the atmosphere of a room.” Budd remembered how he carefully deliberated over the titles for compositions like “Madrigals of the Rose Angel.” “It was wonderful, that image of a rose angel,” Budd said. “Whatever a ‘rose angel’ is, I haven’t a clue, and it certainly isn’t a madrigal, but it’s a combination of words that, to me, is still magic. Absolute magic.
“I think a bad title can ruin an otherwise good piece,” Budd continued. “I like the idea of marrying the sound to a really interesting title. The titles don’t mean anything; you’d be slightly mad if you thought they alluded to something real. They’re just evocations of something, God knows what.”
In many ways,
Another Green World
was a transitional album for Eno, a halfway point to his purely ambient works. “The biggest problem is that I also want to use my voice,” said Eno in a lecture at Trent Polytechnic in 1976. “If you sing—in particular if you use lyrics—you create a fixed central position to music. You can’t help that happening somehow … [as] soon as you put a voice on, you create a central image; the instruments are then arranged around it because one is naturally attracted to the voice, just as if one where in a forest you would naturally look towards a human being entering into that forest …
“On my last album
Another Green World
I had two kinds of music. There was one that solved this problem by not using any voice at all. There was another one that maintained the conventional song format, and so the album, which had 14 tracks on it, was a sequence of different approaches. What I’m interested in now is not having a sequence of different approaches. Somehow compacting that sequence so they’re one on top of each other, so they interact with each other.”
Before and After Science
, Eno’s next solo record, was also a sequence of varied approaches—a dazzling crash-collision of ideas from rock, pop, ambient music, and all points in between. It was more outwardly rock’n’roll than
Another Green World
, and in some ways, it was a step back in time; it seemed to have more in common with 1974’s
Taking Tiger Mountain [by Strategy]
than anything after it. But by the time of
Music for Airports
, released in 1978, Eno’s compositional approach was more continuous and refined.
Music for Airports
was
Another Green World
’s exploration of textures and
Discreet Music
’s exploration of tape-loop processes taken one radical step further, into full-on ambient
Even though most of the tracks on
Another Green World
had no lyrics, the album features some of Eno’s most poetic, evocative song titles. The titles served an important function; they were mental triggers that could set the imagination of the listener reeling in a certain direction. Each title—“In Dark Trees,” “The Big Ship,” “St Elmo’s Fire’’—offers an impressionistic image for the person listening. When you listen to an instrumental like “In Dark Trees,” it’s hard not to envisage dense forests, shadows, and fog. “Spirits Drifting’’ seems to suggest ghostly, eerie specters seeping out of the air.
Harold Budd, a kindred spirit to Eno who would soon collaborate with him on several albums, offered some insights on the importance of song titles. “The only thing I ever go into the studio with is a list of titles,” Budd said. “And if I really like the titles, I know it’s going to happen. And it does happen. That’s the way it goes. What a wonderful way to live, honestly. The titles, of course, are my version of poetry, I guess, or something like that. They don’t have a rhyme scheme or anything like that, but they’remostly images, and kind of little things that tend to paint or tint the tenor or the atmosphere of a room.” Budd remembered how he carefully deliberated over the titles for compositions like “Madrigals of the Rose Angel.” “It was wonderful, that image of a rose angel,” Budd said. “Whatever a ‘rose angel’ is, I haven’t a clue, and it certainly isn’t a madrigal, but it’s a combination of words that, to me, is still magic. Absolute magic.
“I think a bad title can ruin an otherwise good piece,” Budd continued. “I like the idea of marrying the sound to a really interesting title. The titles don’t mean anything; you’d be slightly mad if you thought they alluded to something real. They’re just evocations of something, God knows what.”
In many ways,
Another Green World
was a transitional album for Eno, a halfway point to his purely ambient works. “The biggest problem is that I also want to use my voice,” said Eno in a lecture at Trent Polytechnic in 1976. “If you sing—in particular if you use lyrics—you create a fixed central position to music. You can’t help that happening somehow … [as] soon as you put a voice on, you create a central image; the instruments are then arranged around it because one is naturally attracted to the voice, just as if one where in a forest you would naturally look towards a human being entering into that forest …
“On my last album
Another Green World
I had two kinds of music. There was one that solved this problem by not using any voice at all. There was another one that maintained the conventional song format, and so the album, which had 14 tracks on it, was a sequence of different approaches. What I’m interested in now is not having a sequence of different approaches. Somehow compacting that sequence so they’re one on top of each other, so they interact with each other.”
Before and After Science
, Eno’s next solo record, was also a sequence of varied approaches—a dazzling crash-collision of ideas from rock, pop, ambient music, and all points in between. It was more outwardly rock’n’roll than
Another Green World
, and in some ways, it was a step back in time; it seemed to have more in common with 1974’s
Taking Tiger Mountain [by Strategy]
than anything after it. But by the time of
Music for Airports
, released in 1978, Eno’s compositional approach was more continuous and refined.
Music for Airports
was
Another Green World
’s exploration of textures and
Discreet Music
’s exploration of tape-loop processes taken one radical step further, into full-on ambient
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