„The Inbetweeners“
The radio hour of „Klanghorizonte“ with Close, Liminal, and the usual suspects:
My two albums of the year 2025 are out now, CLOSE by Steve Tibbetts, and LIMINAL by Brian Eno and Beatie Wolfe.
Yesterday Steve sent me a photo, on which I see three musicians on stage, bathed in blue light. My suggestion: the threesome of CLOSE in concert. Mhmmm… I will ask Steve.
In the review Steve liked my phrase of „a dark „Rothko painting on fire“. I answered I like when certain sentences that come to mind while writing a review surprise myself (in retrospect) in regards to a certain freshness – my moment is the thing with that mood line and timeline there. The list of music with a glow factor 10.
I don‘t think the expression „The Inbetweeners“ is a very common word in English, simple as it may be. But it is a fine title for Victoria Segal’s quite enthusiastic writing on „Liminal“ in the December issue of Mojo.
It took a second, more focussed, listening of „Liminal“ to the enter „The Blow Away Zone“.
There is a small passage in Maya Deren‘s short film „Meshes Of The Afternoon“, in which the protagonist enters a different landscape (literally) with every step she takes. It‘s like listening to the eleven pieces of the album: with every track you enter another space. Seamless. Immaculate.
In his little book on art and recent interviews on the trilogy with Beatie, Brian says repeatedly he likes to create uncharted territories, places, he may want to live in.
Fittingly, they just sent „Liminal“ to outer space.
You can easily switch the perspective: look at (or listen to) the pieces of „Liminal“ as unknown „places“ within yourself. Feelings we have no words for. Or rarely used ones. Two sides of a coin.
These feelings, these sensations inside: they slightly or strongly differ from person to person. One guy’s miniature satori is another guy’s boredom.
Steve Tibbetts speaks of music as a mind to mind experience. In my last sentence of my „Close“ review I wrote a very simple sentence: „This album breaks my heart“. It is only a step away from speaking of „heartbreaking music“. I like it when things get personal. You rarely read this simple phrase in a review. For a second it stops you in the tracks like thinking: „Hold on, did that guy really write that?“ He did. I did.
Steve Tibbetts and Marc Anderson could name themselves, too, „The Inbetweeners“. A good name for a band.
On „Close“ Steve and Marc and JT Bates (on drums, occasionally) go, in my mind, as deep as deep can go. Someone not being an agnostic like me could brand the music of „Liminal“ and „Close“ as „spiritual music“. Fair enough.
These two albums go beyond the everyday and, well, will simply open (for some people, and hopefully for some more) those infamous „gates of perception“. Whatever happens when your mind, dear reader, is going places…. a dark Rothko on fire…. losing words… comfort in the dark… shelter from the stars… eine Schaukel unter einem Sternenhimmel…
By the way: The drums on „Close“: how did they create that sound… a special Tibbetts „treatment“? Not like drums going wild… not like drums from those old power trio times… more like drums on a journey within… glowing, glowing, glowing…
Hang on, what am I writing here?
Ein Kommentar
flowworker
Ich empfehle einen Podcast über Enos 50 Jahre alten Meilenstein Another Green World, allerdings hinter einer Bezahlschranke bei The Quietus ….
Here the introduction
The album is one of my all time favourites ….
In this week’s Low Culture Podcast, Luke Turner is once more joined by Jude Rogers for a chat about Brian Eno’s Another Green World. Released 50 years ago next month, this is the sound of Eno working out who he was as an artist in a gloriously tricksy, strange album that blends songwriting and his rich, distinctive voice with the more textual, proto-ambient music for which he’d become synonymous. Best approached by reciprocating the sense of wonder with which it is imbued, Another Green World is a thoughtful, melancholy, fragile record, arguably one of Eno’s most emotionally resonant moments. Recorded with a bewildering array of musicians including John Cale and Phil Collins, initial sessions didn’t go well – Eno remembered the studio time as a horrible experience that left him in tears, but then the mysterious power of his Oblique Strategies cards helped liberate the musicians, who joined the core flow of his creativity with their distinctive contributions. Water is a recurring motif in Eno’s lyrical imagery, so Luke and Jude have a chat about the inspiration of the natural world on the album, and then throughout his work.
Jude reveals that she was taught violin by the same man who taught John Cale, and the duo conclude by discussing how Another Green World connects with religious music as well as a childlike imagination, but then how from it we hear signposts to anything from his Bowie productions, to post punk artists like Wire and OMD, to ambient music, or tQ favourites like William Doyle and Grumbling Fur.
Most of all though there’s that combination of songs and texture that makes the record so tactile, especially combined with Eno’s beautiful lyrical imagery, just on the right side of the absurd. It’s a record, says Jude, that helps you keep in touch with an innocent inner child that is really, never lost.