Small Craft On A Milk Sea

It's been a while since we heard anything from Brian Eno in a solo capacity, and I suspect his new album, 'Small Craft On A Milk Sea', is the closest we will get, recorded as it is with friends and musical disciples Jon Hopkins and Leo Abrahams.

The cover gives away a lot of clues to the musical content, a bleak, weather-beaten landscape akin to the planet Mars. Eno wants his listeners to imagine a film that would go with the music – a kind of addition to the 'Music for Films' project in that sense. Sure enough it proves very easy to achieve this sensation, especially if listening on surround sound or headphones.

Yet there is more – and it isn't necessarily what you might expect. The sound pictures, though often disparate, are carefully structured within the context of the album, so that there is a gradual build-up of intensity. The ambience of the beginning doesn't feel comfortable for long, its initially soothing sonorities twisting into foreboding harmonies, as if an explosion is imminent.

The storm arrives in 'Horse' and '2 Forms Of Anger', the sixth track, with the scenery suddenly hurrying past at breakneck speed, emotions fraught and close to losing control. Then, almost as soon as it arrived, the storm is past. This makes the album almost like an inverse hurricane, its eye a seething cauldron of sound.

It's this that makes 'Small Craft On A Milk Sea' so compelling, as the following ambient interludes are far from comfortable and often hint at a second wind. As an overall structure it is proof positive that ambient music can be so much more than the sum of its parts, and it provides confirmation too that Eno remains at the top of his game.