Brian Eno's Another Green World (33 1/3 series) [Paperback]

Geeta Dayal (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: October 22, 2009

<p>The serene, delicate songs on Another Green World sound practically<br/>meditative, but the album itself was an experiment fueled by<br/>adrenaline, panic, and pure faith. It was the first Brian Eno album to<br/>be composed almost completely in the confines of a recording studio,<br/>over a scant few months in the summer of 1975.  The album was a proof<br/>of concept for Eno's budding ideas of "the studio as musical<br/>instrument," and a signpost for a bold new way of thinking about<br/>music.<br/><br/>In this book, Geeta Dayal unravels Another Green World's abundant<br/>mysteries, venturing into its dense thickets of sound. How was an<br/>album this cohesive and refined formed in such a seemingly ad hoc way?<br/>How were electronics and layers of synthetic treatments used to create<br/>an album so redolent of the natural world? How did a deck of cards<br/>figure into all of this? Here, through interviews and archival<br/>research, she unearths the strange story of how Another Green World<br/>formed the link to Eno's future -- foreshadowing his metamorphosis<br/>from unlikely glam rocker to sonic painter and producer.<br/></p>>

Editorial Reviews

Review

"Dayal's unique and fresh take, which also delves into Discreet Music, is a must read for Eno fans and makes a great primer for the uninitiated."
-Flagpole Magazine

"Dayal's lucid, elegant deconstruction of Brian Eno's most beguiling album is also an inspiring, delightful inquiry into the nature of creativity and constraint. Anyone interested in art making needs to read this."
—Ed Park, author of Personal Days

"...the best short introduction to Eno's work and ethos going."

The Wire, February 2010

Mention in Nottingham Evening Post, February 2010

Article by author Geeta Dayal in Frieze, 1st June 2010, with a puff for the book in the end.

Selected by Flavorwire as one of "10 Great Books about Music by Female Writers" http://flavorwire.com/features/staff-lists/7967-words-and-music-our-60-favorite-music-books/3/

About the Author

Geeta Dayal's writing on music, visual art, and science has appeared in many major publications, including Bookforum, The Wire, The New York Times, The International Herald-Tribune, and The Village Voice. She is currently at work on a second book on the history of electronic music. She lives in Boston.

Product Details

• Paperback: 128 pages
• Publisher: Continuum; 1 edition (October 22, 2009)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0826427863
• ISBN-13: 978-0826427861
• Product Dimensions: 4.8 x 0.3 x 6.5 inches
• Shipping Weight: 4 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.2 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (12 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #670,883 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Most Helpful Customer Reviews

23 of 24 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars Excellent short guide to a landmark recording and its environment. November 4, 2009

By Steven Yates

Format:Paperback|Amazon Verified Purchase

Geeta Dayal's contribution to Continuum's 33 1/3 series was delayed several times; finally in print, it was definitely worth the wait. Geeta Dayal has successfully walked the tightrope between giving us an extended review of a record that (incredibly!) will be 35 years old next year and a biography of its creator, Brian Eno. What we get are touches of both--in the context of a nice, accessible guide to the total environment that went into the making of that amazing record, Another Green World. We are reminded that Eno's way of working drew on such devices as the Oblique Strategies cards, what he'd learned from other adventurous composers such as John Cage, Cornelius Cardew, Steve Reich and Terry Riley, and the gold mine of ideas available in books he'd read ranging from Stafford Beer's ventures into cybernetics and management to Morse Peckham's exploration of the relationship between art and biology. Eno's way of working, which treated musical composition as one species of system creation and used the recording studio as a de facto instrument, lifted Eno out of the boxes that confined, e.g., the majority of "prog rockers." Among the results was removing vocals/lyrics from the center of the picture resulting in "flatter" productions where no single instrument dominates. This mindset would lead to the development of ambient music in the late 1970s/early 1980s and, later, to generative music in the 1990s. It's amazing that any one person could pull all this off--but Eno is undoubtedly a genius, having gone from visually-stunning (and cross-dressing) Roxy Music glam rocker to one of the world's most in-demand producers and most respected visual artists.

While drawing on the numerous interviews Brian Eno has given for the music press, Dayal's treatment also makes use of observations by other musicians who have worked with Eno and agreed to be interviewed for her book: Robert Fripp, Harold Budd, Percy Jones, David Toop, Leo Abrahams, and others. Dayal also draws on past statements by David Bowie, John Cale, and others. All these insights reveal the strange combination of playfulness and occasionally frustration that came with working in the studio with Captain Eno, who had been educated at an art school (Ipswich) whose instructors deliberately set about to upset all their students preconceptions about their subject matter. From those who have worked with him we get a near-unanimous vote of confidence. He knew what he was doing; his aim was to unlock hidden potential: undertaking the musical equivalent of planting seeds and then just observing what they grew into (one of the Oblique Strategies does read "Gardening, not architecture").

Another Green World itself is, to my mind, an immortal album, almost like magic set in sound. Many of its fourteen tracks are unlike anything recorded either before or since. Five are songs, with lyrics and fairly standard structure. Sample titles: "St. Elmo's Fire," "I'll Come Running," "Everything Merges With the Night." The other nine are instrumental sound paintings evoking various moods and images. Sample titles: "Becalmed," "In Dark Trees," "Little Fishes," "Spirits Drifting." The opener, "Sky Saw," begins as an instrumental but then brings in vocals, forming a kind of bridge between the two. One of Geeta Dayal's later chapters (interestingly titled using the Oblique Strategy "Ask people to work against their better judgment") walks us one-by-one through the various tracks on Another Green World, integrating commentary from the musicians that worked on these tracks often with no idea what other musicians were doing or what the results would be like.

Geeta Dayal is to be congratulated for pulling together a lot of information and insight into this one slim volume. For some reason I was expecting a book with physically larger dimensions, but that's neither here nor there. This is a useful contribution to a slowly growing literature on Brian Eno and belongs in every serious Eno collector's library.

18 of 19 people found the following review helpful

1.0 out of 5 stars Disappointing January 13, 2011

By Mark Malamud

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This was the second 33 1/3 book I read (the first was Hugo Wilcken's excellent Low) and I can't overstate my disappointment. Unlike Wicken's book which always kept the album in focus, Dayal's work hardly even keeps the album in sight. Despite asserting in the preface that the book would not be a biography, an excessive amount of time is spent repeating old stories about Eno's history (pre- and post- Another Green World) that have little or no bearing on the album in question. In over 100 pages, less than a dozen actually focus on the album's tracks. In short: this book is not a source for anyone interested in learning something specific about Another Green World.

12 of 15 people found the following review helpful

1.0 out of 5 stars quite a poor effort March 23, 2010

By cloud chamber

Format:Paperback|Amazon Verified Purchase

I very much looked forward to this book and when it arrived I noticed it was quite a thin volume. Quality over quantity? Alas, it was neither quality nor quantity.

To begin, the entire introduction has the author lamenting the difficulty of writing the book and that difficulty shows in the wandering, ADD approach she brings to the subject. It lacks focus and while some details of Another Green World are described, she brings nothing new to the table.

Every analogy is without merit, especially the cinematic analogies. The David Lynch/Angelo Badalamenti analogy is telling in that it tells the reader that Geeta Dayal lacks the necessary skill as a writer to describe the working relationship between Brian Eno and Robert Fripp.

At one point the author writes that Led Zeppelin's Physical Graffiti wasn't their greatest record. This book is filled with useless bits such as that one. While such bits try to place AGW in context, they succeed only in padding this lifeless volume out to just barely over 100 pages.

In the end, the bibliography was more interesting than the book. A failed effort for a subject which deserves so much more.