Customer Reviews

Before and After Science

5 star:		(35)
4 star:		(13)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

2 cents on the music: very good, very wonderful, very Eno. Unabashed pop (Backwater, Here He Comes) mixes with artier WTFs (Kurt's Rejoinder), nervous funk (No One Receiving), and spacier dreamscapes (Energy, Julie). I quite prefer the second half of this album, which in its textural bliss culminates in the gorgeous Spider and I, which is a fitting farewell to Eno's "vocal" era. As on his previous album Another Green World, Eno makes use of the deft rhythm battery of Phil Collins and Percy Jones, who were both playing in Brand X at the time. (And one of `em was in Genesis, too, I think.) For all his talk about being a non-musician, blah blah blah, Eno knew the value of hiring top creative players, and he himself is no slouch at playing imaginative keyboards - listen to that almost orchestral buildup in Julie With. So, the music gets four stars from me, even if a couple of the tracks grate the nerves on occasion.

But if you're reading this, chances are you're wondering about the SOUND of these reissues. I had cassettes of these early Eno albums back in college, I had original CDs, I had the 1993 boxsets...and I figured this time out, we'd get the once-and-for-all, definitive, hi-quality editions we'd all been waiting for. And...er...well, it's nothing that drastic. These are not remasters, these are not remixes, these are "retransfers"; to my ears, this apparently means a wee bit more clarity, a wee bit higher CD master volume (but not much), and that's it. No doubt they sound better than the original CDs, but it's not much of an improvement over what was heard in the Vocal and Instrumental boxsets over a decade ago. And those were needing an upgrade, if you ask me.

The problem is in the original mixes. No One Receiving, for example, buries the drums and removes almost all the visceral punch you could expect from a track with two basses. It's maddening to have to adjust your home EQ/volume to try and bring this track out of its shell. On the other hand, Kurt's Rejoinder puts the bass WAY OUT THERE, and I'm left wondering why Eno couldn't have found a happy medium somewhere. Actually, it's some of the bass/drum tracks on Another Green World that frustrate me the most, but there are bits on this album, particularly the leadoff track, that could have used some 2004 tweaking.

To clarify, I'm not complaining about the analog beauty of the album. Those keyboard washes in Julie With sound wonderful to me, better than any digital recording. There's a "datedness" to the sound of this record that cannot be replaced (or fixed). But I'm still left with the opinion that these latest reissues are not all they could have been. Nevertheless, these have become the definitive editions for now, so grab this album and its predecessor, have your remote handy, turn out the lights, cue up and enjoy.

There are many people who belive that 'Here Come the Warm Jets' is Eno's best album & there are an equal amount of people who are behind 'Another Green World', but I believe Eno's true masterpeice is 'Before and After Science'. It utilizes everything that was great about Brian Eno, from his fast paced glam rock to his slow, meditative confessionals, and even leaves room for some ambient music(which Eno invented). Whereas 'Here Comes the...' was sometimes overflowing with too much "glam", and 'Another...' was slightly overdoing it with the ambience/instrumentals, 'Before and...' strikes just the right balance. The first side is mostly in the same vein as 'Here Comes...' with some fabulous songs like "Kings Lead Hat". Side 2 on the other hand is THE gratest side of music in rock history. It is basically a mix of what Eno experimented with on Side 2 of David Bowie's 'Low' and what he himself did on 'Another Green World'. Every song on Side 2 has shimmering beauty that I have never heard anywhere else. 'Here he Comes', 'Julie With...', 'By This River', & 'Spider and I' are all perfect songs, and 'Through Hollow Lands' is one of Eno's most beautiful instrumentals (along with Sombre Reptiles, Becalmed, & anything off 'Music for Airports). Even though Eno made around 6 other classic solo albums (Another,Here Come,Taking Tiger Mountain,& Ambient 1,3,&4), I have always felt the 'Before and After Science is not only his greatest achievement, but one of the most amazing recordings in rock history. Do yourself a favor and buy it now!

Brian Eno is one of the most marvelous paradoxes in all of music. He is both a musical genius and yet not the least virtuosic. On the one hand, as he is avid to emphasize, he is at most an average musician. He is competent as a guitarist, a keyboardist, and bass player, but hardly brilliant. If one hears a strikingly brilliant instrumental solo on a number, it is almost invariably the result of a contribution by one of the many musical guests on his albums. On the other hand, he is astonishingly masterful at constructing exquisite musical competitions, layering one marvelous element upon another to produce music that is both energizing and utterly unique. Eno possesses an almost preternatural ability to add a new wrinkle that cranks up the level excitement to a higher level, almost functioning like a sonic masseur who locates one musical pressure point after another with his subtle variations and machinations. BEFORE AND AFTER SCIENCE is one of his very finest albums. I would put it on a short list of his most essential works, along with the three other vocal albums (HERE COME THE WARM JETS, TAKING TIGER MOUNTAIN BY STRATEGY, and ANOTHER GREEN WORLD) and one purely instrumental album, AMBIENT IV. Although he is at best an adequate vocalist, his vocal albums have a richness of texture and content that is missing in all of the instrumental efforts. To say that the instrumental albums are more boring than the vocal ones doesn't quite get at the point: the instrumental albums seem empty at their core. They are not bad, but except for the sole exception noted above, none of them come anywhere near to the level of the four vocal albums.

Although BEFORE AND AFTER SCIENCE was Eno's fourth (and up to the present, last-one fears that he may never attempt another) vocal album, it is possibly his most pop oriented. Although none of the cuts was a candidate for a top 40 hit, this album is far more accessible than anything else he has recorded. This could be a fault if the individual songs were not so marvelously done. Although this is not my favorite vocal album, it nonetheless has several cuts that I enjoy as much as anything that Eno has done. Nothing on this album approaches the extraordinary beauty of a cut like "Everything Merges With the Night" from ANOTHER GREEN WORLD, but it does contain several remarkable numbers. My personal favorites are "Blackwater," a joyously surreal nautical tale that is notable for its hard driving energy and relentless forward momentum, and "King's Lead Hat," which shows Eno at his creative peak. Other highlights include the opening cut "No One Receiving," the fascinating "Kurt's Rejoinder," "Energy Frees the Magician," and the gentle, folkish "Here He Comes."

I originally got Eno's albums around the time that they were first released, and over the years they have provided me with as much consistent enjoyment as anyone I have listened to. Now that most of his better albums have been re-released on CD, all fans of music should avail themselves of this opportunity to experience these albums firsthand.

Punk was breaking, post-punk was already in the plodding throes of birth, the glam era was crawling home zooted and drunk for the last gasp, and Brian Eno was quietly doing his own thing, manifesting one of the best records of all time - "Before and after Science". This was the last record of his great rock 'n' roll period and the first of his understated electro-ambient phase which has persisted to this day. This album was made and released around the same time as David Bowie's "low" and both albums are disturbingly similar. Why? Because Eno produced and even co-wrote some of the songs on "low". There is much which Bowie, in the mid-70's, owed to Eno, yet Bowie went on to his plastic fame while Eno preferred sticking to the simplicity and the music itself. This album, a watershed and a turning point, will rock you out and then drift you gently out to sea, darkly, calmly. The final lines of the final song, "Spider and I": "We sleep in the mornings, we dream of a ship that sails away - a thousand miles away." Swells of synth slowly fade away and usher in the ambience which has become Brian Eno.

This is about as abstract as rock music ever got. Brian Eno had released another white-knuckle progressive rock album - this probably being his best work - at the same time the sycophantic journalists at NME were beating the drum for punk. (So The Clash exemplified British poverty better than the Pistols and could play circles around their contemporaries? Isn't that kind of like being the tallest midget in the circus?) Well, Brian Eno had just invented a new genre of music (ambient); he had just finished working with David Bowie on 'Heroes' and 'Low', and more recently, moved into remarkably sophisticated krautrock terrain on 'Before and After Science'. Yet boring charlatans like Sid Vicious managed to steal the spotlight.

This is it: the most exiting album ever released. Buy it and watch your false teeth fly across the room in joy.

The last in Eno's series of quirky, unique albums from the 70's before he moved totally into ambient music and expored his "rock" side only through production of other artists.

Like the titles that came before, Before and After Science finds Eno stringing together a series of offbeat numbers ranging from rock to pop to ambient and everything in between. This record was sequenced with most of the more ambient numbers at the end, unlike Another Green World's free admixture of styles. I personally liked the AGW way better, but fortunately we have the option these days of programming the songs in any order we want, so problem solved.

Eno's star-studded array of collaborators had become as legendary as his skewed sense of pop by this point, with everyone from Phil Manzanera to Phil Collins to Robert Fripp sitting in on this one. They were Eno veterans, but Eno's concurrent interest in German art-rock brings Can's Jaki Liebzeit and Moebius and Roedelius from Cluster to the table on Before and After Science.

My favourite moments: The atmospheric but too-short "Energy Fools the Magician" with the Brand X rhythm section of Percy Jones and Collins, with Fred Frith. The frantic new wave single "King's Lead Hat" (an anagram of Talking Heads) with Fripp. And all of the old "side 2" especially the beautiful "By This River" with Cluster. The piano has haunted me since I first heard it way-back-when, and I enjoy playing it myself. The closing "Spider and I" summons up a massive wall of synths-n-bass, and Eno's resigned vocal is quite fitting as he was about to leave the rock world (as a performer) for a very, very long time.

I have the earlier CD edition and to tell you the truth I don't notice anything radically different about the remaster, so the cheaper original CD might be a good bargain unless you're a real audiophile.

If you combined Roxy Music and Pink Floyd's instrumentals with vocals by a spaced-out Ringo Starr, you'd have Before And After Science. And oddly enough, it works.

A heady mix of catchy melodies, whacked-out lyrics, and hauntingly beautiful musical passages make Eno's work here quite compelling. You'll find yourself humming at least three or four tunes, yet you won't skip past any tracks.

I'm not an expert on synth stuff, but this stuff is fabulous, creating sounds you'd SWEAR came from a 23rd century orchestra. Recommended for lovers of keyboard excellence as well as those who enjoy well-crafted and quirky pop-rock. You'll REALLY dig it on headphones. :)

The last album from sonic experimenter, Brian Eno's pop period, 1977's Before and After Science, incorporates elements from each of the previous works from that stage of his career. The album's first side features funky, glam rock oddities, like to those of 1973's Taking Tiger Mountain by Strategy and Here Come the Warm Jets, such as the instantly addictive as "Backwater" and the eerie, idiosyncratic "No One Receiving." Side B recalls Eno's 1975 masterpiece, Another Green World, with a ghostly, serene soundscapes of interconnecting songs, the best of which are the mournful "Here He Comes" and the gorgeously icy "By This River." After this album, Eno would expand his experimentation further and further, founding ambient music and appealing only to the a select group of music fans. Before and After Science is a good example of when Eno used his monstrous creativity to put fresh spins on more conventional song structures.

Back when I bought this album, albums had two sides (whether on vinyl or tape). Because of what I liked musicallyn back then, I initially loved side one (let's call it the "progressive rock side") and was bored by side two (let's call it the "serene side"). Eventually, though, I found the understated, beautiful songs on side 2 as enjoyable as the rhythmic, complex songs on side 1. Looking back, I think the album parallels Eno's career: the first side represents his rock-influenced Bowie/Roxy Music/solo stuff, the second side represents his later shift to ambient music. Both sides are simply incredible. Regardless of your mood or musical preferences, this album can meet your musical needs --- play the first part of this CD when you want to tap your foot, play the second part if you want quiet, thoughtful music. I wish more CDs were as well constructed as Before and After Science.

Another of Eno's fantastic earlier efforts. This album has tracks as catchy and instantly addictive as "Backwater" and "King's Lead Hat" (which is an anagram for Talking Heads, an excellent band), and songs as ghostly, yearning, and beautiful as "Julie With..." and "Spider and I." This album shows Eno still using his creative abilities to put fresh spins on conventional song structures, but also venturing into more ambient, atmospheric, mood pieces. Sometimes upbeat and catchy, sometimes still and haunting, but always entertaining and worthwile. Pick this disc up.