Brian Eno– Lux (Warp Records)
The quasi-manifesto liner notes that accompanied Brian Eno's 1975 album Discreet Music offered the first definition of ambient music, coining the term and providing a blueprint for an immersive approach that leant itself to appreciation on both conscious and intuitive levels. Acting in an almost utilitarian fashion, as an extension of Erik Satie's concept of “furniture music,” Eno suggested a methodology in which sounds would be created to blend in with an atmosphere, becoming as much a part of an environment as lighting or temperature. While this approach, that of creating music to act as a sort of sonic wallpaper rather than as a focal point, might sound like something that would cause most musicians to recoil in horror, it has been made manifest in a striking variety of applications since its inception. Its essential core, however, has rarely been executed as artfully as it has by Eno; who, despite a career defined solely by versatility and variety, can be counted on to revisit the idea at least every few years, each time offering a glimpse of a master at work.
Lux, Eno's first solo work since 2005's Another Day On Earth, seems to capture the man working in as much of a full-on classicist mode as somebody behind such an eclectic body of work could be said to engage. The music is characterized by the sort of gentle drift, long decaying echoes, and hushed tonality that have characterized his ambient albums since he started making them. It may seem a bit toothless, especially compared with the work of some of those who have taken up Eno's mantle, from William Basinski to Christian Fennesz – artists trading in work more conceptually challenging and aggressively minimalist – but that seems to be the point. Lux is a work at peace with its ideological and theoretical implications, not browbeating the listener with defining conceits or allowing them to overcome the music itself, but instead offering a warm blanket of sound, a softly immersive atmosphere. It's not music that does much, or would even aspire to. It's placid, almost static, in its approach, paradoxically a picture of forward movement that never seems to shift appreciably.
The album was created as the audio complement to an exhibit of Eno's visual art in Turin and, lacking access to this counterpart, it isn't easy to determine how well the album works within the bounds of its intended conceptual framework. It's not difficult to look at the Palace Of Venaria, the building that housed Eno's work, and imagine Lux as a sort of sonic analog to its high celings and massive open spaces. It's easier still to imagine the billowing synthesizer pads and crystalline piano tones echoing from the walls of its spacious interior, but this almost seems too literal. What Eno has created isn't monolithic, despite its singularity of intent, but rather acts as an interstitial drift, a phantasmal cloud of tones that unobtrusively occupies empty space without laying sole claim to it. Also, unlike the denser, more cereberal installation work in which Eno had previously dabbled, especially his cluster of late-1990s albums, his newest is easier to engage and more readily enjoyable regardless of its compatability with other media or aesthetic consistency.
While Eno's career has been varied enough that it couldn't be said to have followed a particular trajectory, thus negating in advance the idea that he could veer from or stick to a particular path, it has been some years since he's made any work that could be considered unanticipated. Lux does little to buck that trend. However, just as Eno's newest isn't exactly surprising, it should also come as no surprise that he remains able to make albums that hold true to the practical intentions of ambient music's initial purpose, while still remaining something that can hold a listener's conscious attention. Lux isn't necessarily challenging work, but it's still an engaging listen, a time-tested creative force settling comfortably within boundaries of his own creation and offering memorable work from therein.