Taking Tiger Mountain By Strategy [Original recording remastered]

Brian Eno | Format: Audio CD

Product Details

• Audio CD (June 1, 2004)
• Number of Discs: 1
• Format: Original recording remastered
• Label: Astralwerks
• ASIN: B00015TOCY
• Also Available in: Audio CD  |  Audio Cassette  |  Vinyl  |  MP3 Download
• Average Customer Review: 4.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (52 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #37,040 in Music (See Top 100 in Music)

Editorial Reviews

More experimental pop classics on the 1974 album, including Burning Airlines Give You So Much More; The Fat Lady of Limbourg; The Great Pretender; Third Uncle , and more.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

50 of 50 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Spy Games, April 4, 2003

By 

Greg Cleary (Marquette, MI United States) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Taking Tiger Mountain By Strategy (Audio CD)

Amid all the discussion of Eno's innovations, people sometimes forget that he has the one quality that REALLY matters for a musician: personality. I can't vouch for his "ambient" works because I've never had the patience to listen to anything like that, but the four "song" albums he made in the 70s are loaded with personality. Eno could be weird and idiosyncratic, but there is also plenty of humor and even warmth in this music. And "Taking Tiger Mountain" was his greatest achievement, in my opinion.

There is something weird and mysterious going on in every one of these songs, many of which refer to some sort of quest. The overall feel is something like that of a child playing spy games, although often the imagery is disturbing or menacing in a way that no child could have imagined. Memorable phrases are constantly jumping out at you:

"Certain streets have certain corners
Sooner or later we'll turn yours."

"Sweet Regina's on the plane a Newsweek on her knees
While far below the curlews call from strangely stunted trees."

"Let me just point out discreetly though you never learn.
All those tawdry late night weepies I can make you weep more cheaply."

And then there's the sinister lullaby "Put a Straw Under Baby," which I've learned was inspired by Eno's Catholic upbringing and can be read as a child's misinterpretation of religious symbolism.

The music all has a weird texture, even though most of it was produced by traditional rock and roll instruments. "Third Uncle" and "The True Wheel" both contain some truly wicked, flipped-out lead guitar work by Phil Manzanera. The entire album is filled with catchy pop melodies and instrumental hooks that will draw you in immediately, and there is plenty of detail in both sound and words to keep you coming back time after time. This is one of the most treasured albums in my collection.

(Note to Eno fans: If you have not read Eric Tamm's book "Brian Eno: His Music and the Vertical Color of Sound," you need to get ahold of a copy, whether at a library or on the Web. I believe it is out of print. It's one of the best books I've read about a musician or group.)

24 of 24 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Tiger Mountain...gives you so much more, November 12, 2001

By 

Doug Anderson (Miami Beach, Florida United States) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)   

This review is from: Taking Tiger Mountain By Strategy (Audio CD)

Lyrically Eno plays little narrative games,"...and the opium farmers sell dreams to obscure fraternities...down in the orchard monkeys and uncles p-laying their games like it seems they always have done....China my China I wandered around for years and you're still here"(China my China).
Musically the sounds are a mix of the familiar Manzanera guitar and Mackay sax(his two old Roxy Music chums)but also unfamiliar Eno synthesizers which make some very appealing noise and various other unfamiliar aural delights from all manner of unidentifiable sources.
There are so many lyric devices and different sounds that this album feels like a catalogue or manual. Perhaps the Eno equivalent of the Little Red Book.
The beautiful synthesizer phrasings on the closing number Taking Tiger Mountain could easily fit on Another Green World.
Other songs are pure pop heaven though, when Eno sings "Looking for a certain ratio-o-o-o" you can hear that he has learned something from Bryan Ferry. A vocal style Talking Heads' David Byrne will also use.
Fat Lady of Limbourg is perhaps the star of the show but not by much as every song is a winning combination of odd verse and even odder backing noises. Though its experimental its also fun and listenable as any pop record if not more so. There is plenty here to challenge the playful mind that always is looking for something new, Enos sound terrains are always intriguing, and also there is humor, especially in the words, and a great sense of wandering into the unknown because logical thinking and music making patterns have been left behind. Although familiar things keep popping up, like references to Japan or China, and cold war spy apparatus like microcameras and spectrographs, they are merely there to add drama and a touch of reality c.1974, but only a touch. Tiger Mountain is not to be located on a map.

21 of 21 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars The Pinnacle of Eno's Work, August 13, 1999

By A Customer

This review is from: Taking Tiger Mountain By Strategy (Audio CD)

It is hard for me to review Tiger Mountain without resorting to the most fawning, gushing language of which fandom is capable. I will attempt here to be a bit restrained and objective, but the plain fact is that if some supremely evil dictator decreed tomorrow that no citizen could own more than a single CD, I would choose this one as my lifelong companion: It has beauty, excitement, charm, sensuality, intelligence, and -- oh yes, by the way -- mystery.

Tiger Mountain is Eno's magnum opus. Though Another Green World is probably his stylistic apex, that work lacks Tiger's emotional highs and overall resonance and energy. Though his first solo album redefined what popular music could be, this one puts the polish on that initial redefinition.

From apoplectic onset of Burning Airlines, one is seduced into a blurry Wonderland of connotation and denotation, meaning and nonsense, wakefulness, dreams and nightmares, where one becomes complicit in one's own confusion until the slow polar sweep of the title track fades out. Is this music or drug addiction?

Eno's mastery of sonic texture is never more apparent; his alchemical blending of timbres both traditional and novel never more glittering. Having once heard the counterpoint of Robert Wyatt's innocent falsetto and Portsmouth Sinfonia's sweetly off-key cadences, is it possible either to forget Put A Straw Under Baby or to imagine the song scored in any other fashion?

The redolence and wit of the lyrics as well is unsurpassed, invoking a broad nexus of meanings without enforcing any one in particular. Despite their restive refusal to be pinned down, the words are often startlingly memorable. For instance, it is delightful if profitless to speculate upon what piety may be contained in: "There's a brain in the table/There's a heart in the chair/And they all live in Jesus/It's a family affair."

Released in 1974, Tiger Mountain has aged well. Twenty-five years later, this creative and influential rock endeavor does not show any signs of staleness. On repeated listenings, new surprises continue to well up from its depths. What more could one ask of any long-term relationship?