Among many other things, Brian Eno has always understood that good ambient and minimalist music is far, far more than the bland soundscapes. Having spearheaded the genre for half a century, he knows that at its best, it’s music that can touch a listener’s emotional core more powerfully than the most brutal heavy metal.
For his 29th solo studio album ‘FOREVERANDEVERNOMORE’, he’s homing in on that fact. In a short essay that accompanies it, Eno writes about how he’s only recently begun to embrace “the idea that we artists are actually feelings-merchants”. At a time in which the fabric of reality seems to be coming untethered, he argues, perhaps if we can change the way we feel about the world, we might be able to save it.
This album is a clear and direct response to the tumultuous world in which it was made, consumed with existentialist musings on climate change and the future of the human race – it is his first album with vocals for almost two decades. On ‘Icarus Or Bleriot’, Eno wonders whether we will end up like the former (the tragic Greek hero who flew too close to the sun and fell to his death) or the latter (the pioneering aviator who was the first to fly a plane across the English channel).
The record is reflective rather than a political manifesto. Eno’s conversations on the record are, essentially, with himself. The second track, ‘We Let It In’, is literally a breathing exercise, samples of human exhalations given cosmic weight by Eno’s glacially building synths. Frequently the music on ‘FOREVERANDEVERMORE’ is very beautiful, a complex and blanketing layers of sound.
That said, it’s not a record that ever quite allows you to settle. On the opener ‘Who Gives A Thought’, for instance, Eno meanders his way through questions of why we don’t care for microscopic worms just because they have no commercial value. Beneath the wash of synths behind him, there are buried churns, whizzes and loops that fire off in all directions. At times the record’s outright apocalyptic, like on ‘Garden Of Stars’, where his voice is stretched out into a sinister Gregorian chant, and the music starts to crackle, spit and fray as he repeats visions of doom: “These million years will end / They end in me.”
‘FOREVERANDEVERNOMORE’ is never quite an album that is completely comforting or despairing. Instead, it explores the vast reaches between the two and uses introspection as a means of finding stability in the chaos. It offers no conclusions or solutions for humanity’s vast existential threats, but it does set a groundwork from which we might make a start in tackling them.
Details
- Release date: October 14, 2022
- Record label: Opal Music Ltd.