Track Listing

1. Sky Saw
2. Over Fire Island
3. St. Elmo's Fire
4. In Dark Trees
5. Big Ship
6. I'll Come Running
7. Another Green World
8. Sombre Reptiles
9. Little Fishes
10. Golden Hours
11. Becalmed
12. Zawinul/Lava
13. Everything Merges With the Night
14. Spirits Drifting

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #16182 in Music
• Released on: 2004-06-01
• Number of discs: 1
• Format: Original recording remastered

Album Description
Limited Edition Japanese "Mini Vinyl" CD, faithfully reproduced using original LP artwork including the inner sleeve. Features most recently mastered audio including bonus tracks where applicable.

Amazon.com essential recording
Eno first emerged as a member of Roxy Music, where the synthesizer player electronically "treated" the band's other instruments, the first indicator that the recording process was itself Eno's chosen instrument. His subsequent career has been one of the most provocative in pop, for not only did he devote himself to such obscure pursuits as "ambient music," but he produced vital albums by David Bowie, Talking Heads, and U2. Eno made a handful of relatively conventional pop albums in the 1970s, and Another Green World ranks with Before and After Science as his most enduring solo work. Another Green World finds Eno mixing distorted guitars (courtesy of Robert Fripp) with a variety of keyboards and exotic rhythms to create a meditative wash of sound that is nonetheless awash with colorful touches. Particularly appealing is the bubbling "St. Elmo's Fire," with a stunning guitar part by Fripp, and "I'll Come Running," in which Eno shows that even a dedicated experimentalist can have a soft heart. From the strange-but-true file, Phil Collins contributes drums and percussion to three tracks. --John Milward

Amazon.com
This 1975 recording catches the ex-Roxy Music member in transition between art rock and his more progressive-ambient recordings. With an all-star cast including drummer Phil Collins, guitarist Robert Fripp, and John Cale on viola, Another Green World explores instrumental landscapes and aural textures not normally associated with rock recordings. Drawing on musical influences ranging from Weather Report to La Monte Young and Terry Riley, Brian Eno created layers of quirky sonic atmospheres and electronic tone poems. Using synthesizers, artificial percussion devices, and additional electronic accouterments, he found that the studio itself could become a useful instrument of creativity. Compositions like "Becalmed," "Sombre Reptiles," and the title cut all anticipate Eno's later ambient excursions. One of the many utterly essential Brian Eno albums. --Mitch Myers

Customer Reviews

Great album, great sound a pity one track isn't complete
One my favorite Eno albums, "Another Green World" shows him already on the path to ambient music with about 1/3 of the album devoted to instrumental pieces. In many respects, it's an extension of the work he did on his first two solo albums but the emphasis here is on the more melodic side of things. With Roxy Music's "Stranded" and "Avalon", one of the more atmospheric albums put out by a former member of the band.

The sound is spectacular although you won't hear a huge improvement. Most of the improvements are subtle; it's akin to seeing someone after a facial vs. a facelift. You know that something's different but can't pin it down. The depth of the recording and actual atmosphere of the studio are more readily apparent as are more sonic details.

The damaged track "Everything Merges with the Night" has been repaired in all later editions of this terrific album. Other things that might have improved this set include a booklet with notes on the production of the album, bonus tracks with outtakes (I keep waiting for the singles that Eno released on CD invain it seems) or rough mixes of the album. While I appreciate that Eno wants the album presented as it originally was, it's a pity that we don't know more about the making of the album.

Overall a terrific re-release even. I just wish that it had been packaged with more details about the making of the album.

Sadly, I was ignorant in the 1970's...
I was born in 1971, so, with the exception of receiving Sabbath's "Paranoid" on cassette when I was about 9, my exposure to important music from the 70's was highly limited. I lived under the false assumtion for many years that the best music the 70's had to offer was pre-punk classic rock. However, I have been voraciously consuming music from the 1970s onward for the last 5+ years and I fell face forward over Brian Eno.

Finding Eno was like finding a diamond in your toilet: completely unexpected and unpleasant to get to. In my opinion, this is the pinnacle of Eno's pre-ambient works (which I also appreciate highly). Every song is lovely, haunting, and brilliant. From the opening note to the last note, I am continually in awe. As with all trancendent music, Another Green World is not limited by the period in which it was recorded and it is still fresh and breathtaking 30 years later.

I use the descriptor "mind-blowing" for only a few musical works. Another Green World is on this very short list, along with Iggy & the Stooges' "Raw Power," Pixies' "Come on Pilgrim/Surfer Rosa," My Bloody Valentine's "Loveless," and Sigur Ros' "()."

Eno's Masterpiece
In an interview ten years after the release of his acknowledged 1975 masterpiece ANOTHER GREEN WORLD, Brian Eno said, "I want the music to be as much as possible a continuous condition of the environment...in the same way as a painting is." This goes a long way toward explaining Eno's approach to music, where tone and texture take precedence over lyrics and melody. These are not so much songs as they are ambient sound paintings. Even on songs like "I'll Come Running", which seems to follow a conventional song structure, there is an ethereal beauty about it.

Even on the songs where Eno includes lyrics, they seem to be there not so much for meaning, but for the images they conjure. Consider these lines from "St. Elmo's Fire": "Then we rested in the desert/ Where the bones were white as teeth, sir/ And we saw St. Elmo's Fire / Splitting ions in the ether." In fact, in the Lyrics to "Sky Saw," Eno seems to be saying the words really aren't that important since most people don't pay any attention to them: " All the clouds turn to words / All the words float in sequence / No one knows what they mean / Everyone just ignores them." Besides, only five of the tracks include vocals; the remainder are instrumentals.

Several tracks are less than two minutes ("Over Fire Island," "Little Fishes" and the title track), but the longest track--the vocal "Everything Merges with the Night"--is just barely over four minutes. While the opening track ("Sky Saw") is a gritty guitar-driven song, the rest of the album has a gentle, lush quality. Eno is joined on some tracks by John Cale, Phil Collins and Robert Fripp, as well as a handful of other musicians. If you're new to the music to Brian Eno, this is the place to start. ESSENTIAL