Brian Eno and Beatie Wolfe go „Liminal“
„A quiet life where
We can blend
Hidden thoughts
With sweet lament“
(from Shudder Like Crows)
A manageable arsenal of instruments, essentially synthesizer and guitar. Two defining instruments in rock history—and nothing seems to have been told to an end yet. If anything has completely disappeared from the duo’s music, it is tempo, action, and turmoil. Everything, including the vocals, is imbued with slowness. But the calmness in the execution does not detract from “intoxicated listening“ – and the listener truly is on discovery mode here.
But first things first: after their song cycle “Luminal,” a kind of “electric country dream music” in which the private and the political are closely intertwined in dark times; after the purely instrumental large-scale composition “Lateral,” with its subtly eerie prairie spaces, Brian Eno and Beatie Wolfe now present their third coup.
“Liminal” is no harmless collection of leftovers, rather an exciting collection of immensely rich “instrumentals,” songs, song-like pieces, and the thin places in berween. Each composition reveals a different sphere: lament, primeval fantasy, dream story, at one time probably the most verbose breakup song in recent pop history, set in a laundromat! Or is the narrator just caught in a dream? “Liminal” surprises at every turn.
Although we are confronted time and again with dust, finitude, decay, and darkness, in verses that pose many a riddle and could serve here and there as new koans for Zen students, it is a strangely uplifting experience to dive into these breathing things and sounds.
With Eno being the nighttime painter with a knack for the soul in the machine, the guitar, folksy and meditative, is, at moments, not miles and moons away from legendary campfires moods: a quiet joy, and more than a quantum of solace. The voice, close-miked, has an unexpected range of intimacies to offer, and is not really reliable, coming along like a dangerous entity, ghost-like, a figure from a dream, a meditation on human fragility, a delicate splash of colour.
What a seamless balance between the moments on the brink, and the almost warm-hearted adventures with „oceanic“ vibes in between! Exit strategies for sheer amazement are hard to find on this visionary, wild and strangely relaxed ride!