Before and After Science

Brian Eno

Product Details

• Audio CD (August 31, 1990)
• Original Release Date: 1977
• Number of Discs: 1
• Label: E.G. Records
• ASIN: B000003S0Z
• Also Available in: Audio CD  |  Audio Cassette
• Average Customer Review: 4.7 out of 5 stars See all reviews (27 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #138,402 in Music (See Bestsellers in Music)

Editorial Reviews

Product 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. --This text refers to the Audio CD edition.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

9 of 9 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A tangent in the shadows, November 3, 1999

By	Wm. Rike ([e-mail]) (Ft. Huachuca, Az) - See all my reviews

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.

8 of 9 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars More rewarding than punk., August 7, 2000

By	David Waugh (Manchester, England) - See all my reviews

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.

5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars "In these metal days, December 24, 2001

By	P. Nicholas Keppler "rorscach12" (Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania United States) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

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.