"This groove is out of fashion"

Listen to Strange Overtones - the first, given-away taste of the new Byrne & Eno opus, Everything That Happens Will Happen Today ("our first collaboration in about 30 years").

Of course, it's rich & subtle in many rewarding ways. & it's served to you only after marinading in a bucketload of irony & cleverness.

But to these ears it's also quite disappointingly conservative - more Byrne than Eno, you could say, though that's unfair as the song is quite sharp: it's the music, surprisingly, that for once seems behind the curve ("these beats are 20 years old" is fine as a metaphor, but also is disarmingly accurate)...

Compare with the inspired (& also song-based) Another Day on Earth: more than ever, it seems like Eno's masterpiece of this decade.

ETHWHT is released on August 18.

Suitably spacey, nicely off-kilter

Welcome news today that the very fine Marconi Union are self-releasing a new album of their dense, dubby ambientronica, A Lost Connection, at the start of next month. Hear a couple of suitably moody tracks - Endless Winter & Transient - at their MySpace now (while you're at it, check out their b:dum b:dum spin-off - why isn't this monstrous, bass-drenched music available?!)

Download MU's suitably spacey, nicely off-kilter remix of their own Buildings Without People here.



& to mark the occasion, The Contact (from debut Under Wires & Searchlights, now available from MU themselves...) & Interlock by Frank Bretschneider & Taylor Deupree (from Balance). Arguably, the sumptuous latter track is more representative of more recent MU - & certainly of MU/dotca's 'microsound' mixes (see here).

Video:

Marconi microsound

Although it's gone a bit quiet lately, there's an exceptional set of dense, subtle microsound mixes by or involving the fine Marconi Union (MySpace/Wikipedia) & fellow dubby ambientronica Dotca label mates like b:dum b:dum.

One of the best of these is the most recent (though hardly super-fresh, since it dates from last May), Prospector's 7.0 [NB: file is 31MB].

Includes such LMYE favourites as Pan-American, Stars of the Lid & Frank Bretschneider, plus Eno (with Robert Fripp). Also MU themselves & Cliff Martinez (minor drummer legend reinvented as a film composer, responsible for the mesmerising soundtrack to the 2002 remake of Solaris).

[NB: Boomkat claim that Eno asked MU to supervise the remastering of something of his, which is quite a compliment if true... There's certainly some connection since All Saints released the second MU album, Distance.]

7.0 is here for your convenience. 3.0 & 4.0 are also both outstanding. All the Dotca mixes are downloadable here; some tracklistings are given too.

Here's some full-length versions from artists/tracks in 7.0.

Pan American - Wing (from Quiet City)

Stars of the Lid (MySpace) - Broken Harbors, Part 1 (from The Tired Sounds of Stars of the Lid)

Frank Bretschneider & Taylor Deupree - Interlock (from Balance)

Fripp & Eno (Fripp MySpace) - Meissa (from The Equatorial Stars)

Cliff Martinez (MySpace) - Don't Blow It (from Solaris S/T).

MU - The Contact (from Under Wires and Searchlights)

More Martinez in this wonderful Solaris clip:

Future masterpiece

It doesn't seem too popular a view now, but eventually 2005's Another Day on Earth will be seen as one of Eno's masterpieces - in its staggeringly contemporary way, the equal of another magnificent Another: Another Green World.

Of course, it's not flawless. But in tracks like This, Bottomliners, Bonebomb, Passing Over & the title piece I hear an intelligence & a richness & range that 2-1/2 years on I'm still delighting in. I also love its restraint, a kind of mastery of tone & pace exemplified in Passing Over.

Buy it from the man's own online outlet here. & check out the microsite here.