Brian Eno’s Instrumental Reworking of Songs

Brian Eno (photograph by Cecily Eno, courtesy of Sacks & Co.)

One of the earliest articles I wrote this year involved Verve’s release of Brian Eno’s 22nd studio album entitled FOREVERANDEVERNOMORE. The tracks on this album were vocal, written by Eno. On two of the tracks, the text involve his working with his daughter Darla; and on another track he partnered with Jon Hopkins.

He decided that he would follow up this release with a second album on which the ten tracks were given entirely instrumental renditions. The title of each of the instrumental tracks was given an abbreviation of the title of the corresponding vocal track. The new album was entitled, appropriately enough, FOREVER VOICELESS. It was scheduled for sale as a vinyl record to acknowledge Record Store Day, which is today.

Sadly, the hyperlink provided by the press release seemed to involve only the digital version. Furthermore, Amazon.com created a Web page consisting of 20 tracks, with the ten tracks of FOREVER VOICELESS following those of FOREVERANDEVERNOMORE. That Web page was created yesterday, and I have yet to succeed in finding a viable Web page for any physical version. Fortunately, my own resources allowed me to created separate playlists for the two albums.

I have no idea whether Eno himself had any “listening strategies” in mind for these two releases. From a purely personal point of view, I happen to prefer the instrumental version. However, that is just because I prefer to dwell on the “semantics of the music” (whatever that may mean!) rather than directing my perception at what the vocals are trying to say. Nevertheless, I expect that, some afternoon when I feel adventurous, I will set myself up to for side-by-side listening to each of the individual tracks. My conjecture is that the instrumental versions will serve as responses to the “call” of the texts being sung, but what those responses signify definitely remains to be seen (or heard)!