Brian Eno With Jon Hopkins & Leo Abrahams – Small Craft On A Milk Sea

Good news for anyone who missed out on the LP version the first time around. There's going to be a reissue later this month.

10 years on and I've just uprated this from a steady 3 to a teetering 4 stars. Nobody really takes the time with 'treatments' nowadays and the whole enterprise used to reek a bit of Ikea showroom flat-pack music. Now it's 'just' beginning to sound a little crumpled and fitting in. The album does get better as you go deeper with a few crashing tracks reminiscent of 'Beyond Even' to give you the odd jolt back to consciousness. Some nice ideas here but Brian needs more 'strategically oblique' faulty equipment in his studio.

"Small Craft On A Sea Of Milk" starts off with no real surprises for Eno fans, the first three tracks have that sort of haunted bluesy desolate soundtrack feel, from the achingly delicate piano composition of the opening "Emerald and Lime" to the dreamy guitars of "Complex Heaven" which are both both beautifully played by Jon Hopkins and Leo Abrahams.

Unfortunately from track four things go way out of focus somewhat as it ventures into some self indulgent tribal industrial glitch rock ?? On one track it sounds like Michael Flatley tap dances under the influence of ecstasy while Ritchie Hawtin tries to emulate 303 sounds on a broken DX7, at times I can I hear a slight Aphex Twin "Drukqs" influence ? but without the effortless confidence and intricate details of Mr Richard D James.

Other tracks also beat you into submission with some really pointlessly naff sounds and over the top screeching guitars and other shards of noise which are most irritating and may make you prematurely reach for the eject button, but fortunately on Track ten "Slow Ice, Old Moon" the album returns to some spooky soundscapes which sound similar to moments off Brian's ambient classic "Apollo". Then we are again treated to the gentle and rather emotive bleeps and shifting drones of "Lesser Heaven" and from here on in we are eased back in the comfort zone.

Towards the end we have "Written Forgotten" with its deep buzzing acidic synths, atmospheric pads and dreamy acoustic guitar combined with some oddball vocal samples and warm symphonic strings, which creates a shifting piece of ambient that wouldn't sound out of place in a David Lynch movie.
The album closes off with "Late Anthropocene" which sees Brian moving into the similar sonic terrain of Christian Fennesz with its beautifully layered female choir and wind chimes and glitchy abstraction..

Overall this album has a slight identity crisis, kind of half ambient and half industrial experimental, while the ambient half works really well I feel that the industrial side of it could had have been put to one side for another project perhaps, or even better kept for brian's own personal enjoyment.

Where its ambient 8/10

Where its indulgent 3/10