(Avant Garde) [LP] [24/96] Brian Eno – Small Craft On A Milk Sea (2011) EU 2 x 180 Gram LP - 2011, FLAC (tracks+.cue)

A1 Emerald And Lime (3:01)
A2 Complex Heaven (3:05)
A3 Small Craft On A Milk Sea (1:48)
A4 Flint March (1:55)
B1 Horse (3:01)
B2 2 Forms Of Anger (3:15)
B3 Bone Jump (2:22)
B4 Dust Shuffle (1:53)
C1 Paleosonic (4:25)
C2 Slow Ice, Old Moon (3:25)
C3 Lesser Heaven (3:20)
C4 Calcium Needles (3:28)
D1 Emerald And Stone (2:12)
D2 Written, Forgotten (3:55)
D3 Late Anthropocene (7:55)
TT: 49:00

foobar2000 1.1.10 / Dynamic Range Meter 1.1.1
log date: 2012-04-06 08:42:47

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Analyzed: Brian Eno with Jon Hopkins & Leo Abrahams / Small Craft On A Milk Sea
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DR Peak RMS Duration Track
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DR12 0.00 dB -15.13 dB 3:15 ?-2 Forms Of Anger
DR10 -3.53 dB -17.81 dB 2:22 ?-Bone Jump
DR10 -4.21 dB -19.43 dB 3:28 ?-Calcium Needles
DR10 -5.82 dB -19.93 dB 3:05 ?-Complex Heaven
DR12 -0.78 dB -15.67 dB 1:54 ?-Dust Shuffle
DR11 -5.80 dB -22.07 dB 3:02 ?-Emerald And Lime
DR12 -3.76 dB -21.38 dB 2:12 ?-Emerald And Stone
DR13 0.00 dB -15.75 dB 1:56 ?-Flint March
DR10 -0.48 dB -14.52 dB 3:02 ?-Horse
DR13 0.00 dB -17.84 dB 7:55 ?-Late Anthropocene
DR11 -4.40 dB -18.42 dB 3:21 ?-Lesser Heaven
DR12 0.00 dB -14.99 dB 4:25 ?-Paleosonic
DR11 -6.03 dB -20.55 dB 3:25 ?-Slow Ice, Old Moon
DR10 -5.22 dB -20.24 dB 1:49 ?-Small Craft On A Milk Sea
DR9 0.00 dB -10.61 dB 3:56 ?-Written, Forgotten
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Number of tracks: 15
Official DR value: DR11

Samplerate: 96000 Hz
Channels: 2
Bits per sample: 24
Bitrate: 2578 kbps
Codec: FLAC
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Brian Eno’s 2010 recording ‘Small Craft On a Milk Sea‘ is a loose collection of projects in collaboration with keyboard player and composer Jon Hoplkins and guitarist Leo Abrahams. It features collected snippets from over two years of experimentation. The result is a sometimes flawed but more occasionally great piece of electronica from Eno, with some help from friends. From near perfect sealed vinyl.

In Michael Bracewell’s excellent book on Roxy Music’s point of commencement, Re-Make Re-Model, Brian Eno defines successful pop as ‘the creation of a new, imaginary world, which beckons the listener to join it.’ Eno has spent a decent part of the past couple of decades furiously back-pedaling from that conceit, via his wretchedly earthy work in the production chair for Dido, Coldplay, Andrea Corr and countless other artists who revel in the mundane instead of shifting listeners away from it. Thankfully, he’s gotten back into the business of creating imaginary worlds on Small Craft on a Milk Sea, Eno’s first album for Warp, which was born out of sporadic collaborations between guitarist Leo Abrahams and electronic composer Jon Hopkins.

In part, these recordings are a return to the frosty ambient surface noise that has periodically enthralled Eno since his 1973 collaboration with Robert Fripp on (No Pussyfooting). But there’s a broader range of material here, with the album turning from the great plumes of irascible noise that prickle through ‘Horse’ to the dewy plinks of piano laid over the intangible drone of ‘Slow Ice, Old Moon’. Fortunately, it’s structured so those contrasts feel like a natural progression rather than an amorphous leap, with Eno carefully sequencing the album so all its elements—which were recorded over several years—mostly feel like part of a cohesive whole.

The ambient tracks bookend the album, with the opening ‘Emerald and Lime’ dipping close to the kind of conventional piano-led song structures that Eno often dabbles with in this side of his work (ie. ‘Slow Water’ from Music For Films or ‘By This River from Before and After Science) Conversely, the closing ‘Late Anthropocene’ is a more conceptual piece, with tiny shards of electronic noise cutting and tearing away at its paper-thin surface shapes, which works in a similar sphere to the barely-there qualities deeply embedded in the title track of Eno’s 1975 sub-orbital opus, Discreet Music.

The atmosphere turns nebulous as ‘Emerald and Lime’ eases into ‘Complex Heaven’, but even long-term Eno watchers might be unprepared for ‘Flint March’, which begins with the kind of ultra compressed beats that are usually the sole province of fecal Brooklyn noisemakers Black Dice and Growing. But Eno can’t mainline the aural equivalent of an exhaust pipe spewing out rotten garbage like those bands can; instead, it sounds like he’s tried to get a little dirt under his fingernails, but the decades spent wearing designer suits and working with Bono have left him several hundred yards short of the mark. There’s no grit, no foul taste left in the mouth, nothing that transports you away from the idea of Eno simply shifting around WAV files on an expensive computer.

‘Horse’ and ‘2 Forms of Anger’ have that problem too — they’re both perfectly serviceable pieces of Black Dog-style glitchiness, but it’s all too antiseptic, with the latter devolving into the most unwelcome sound of an electric guitar and a pounding drum beat, which indicates that Eno could be eyeing up Muse as his next production client. At least that job might allow him to dig out his mothballed Roxy Music cape. Thankfully, after those egregious missteps, Small Craft on a Milk Sea quickly picks up again with the fairground whimsy of ‘Bone Jump’ and the slow slide back into the contemplative murk with ‘Slow Ice, Old Moon’.

The final third of this album is where Eno sounds at his most comfortable, where tracks like ‘Lesser Heaven and ‘Calcium Needles’ pass by in a soupy miasma, with little bursts of fractal discord or piano balladry rising and falling in the mix. That quixotic space is where Eno always operates most effectively, whether it’s in his introspective ambient guise or in the pop idiom. It’s when he bumps back down to Earth and starts working with conventional forms (unprocessed guitars, 4/4 drum beats) that he sounds most alien. ‘One of the things about the blues movement that we especially didn’t like was that it was all backward looking—to do with roots and realism and sincerity,’ Eno recalls in Bracewell’s book. ‘And we didn’t want anything to do with that — roots just didn’t interest us.’ For the most part, Small Craft on a Milk Sea slots back into that forward thinking mindset, creating further realms of possibility for Eno to operate in.

Nick Neyland, Drowned In Sound.com (7/10)

I’ll add:
There is something slightly dissonant about some of the more ‘abrupt’ tracks on this album, like they are interrupting someone else’s thoughts, yet the overall effect of this album is to remind you that you are in the company of a serious living legend. I’d argue that several of the contributions of Leo Abraham’s guitar are, if not superfluous, a bit outside the remit. Having said that I have nothing but admiration for Eno’s willingness to experiment, not to roll over to anyone else’s expectations and rightly so. Mind you I’m also the type that thinks Eno’s farts are more interesting than anything most other so called ‘ambient’ musicians produce so who am I to judge? It’ll be interesting to see what you all make of this.

Tracklisting:
A1 Emerald And Lime (3:01)
A2 Complex Heaven (3:05)
A3 Small Craft On A Milk Sea (1:48)
A4 Flint March (1:55)
B1 Horse (3:01)
B2 2 Forms Of Anger (3:15)
B3 Bone Jump (2:22)
B4 Dust Shuffle (1:53)
C1 Paleosonic (4:25)
C2 Slow Ice, Old Moon (3:25)
C3 Lesser Heaven (3:20)
C4 Calcium Needles (3:28)
D1 Emerald And Stone (2:12)
D2 Written, Forgotten (3:55)
D3 Late Anthropocene (7:55)
TT: 49:00

Credits:
You can go to the comprehensive Discogs entry.
Brian Eno – Computers
Jon Hopkins – Piano, Keyboards & Electronics
Leo Abrahams – Guitar, Laptop and Guitaret
Jez Wiles – Percussion (A4,B1,B2,B4)
Pete Chilvers – Recording Supervisor and Sonic Archivist
Kevin Metcalfe – Mastering
All compositions written by Brian Eno, Leo Abrahams, Jon Hopkins
Nick Robinson – Artwork and photography

Tech log:
Ripper: Euripides
Equipment:
VPI HW-17F Vacuum Record Cleaner
Technics SL-1210 T/T, Custom power supply,
Rega RB 300 Tonearm,
Denon DL304 M/C Cartridge
NAD 3130 M/C Stage
M-Audio Profire 610 A/D
Adobe audition 3.0

Method:
Clean records, rip (PCM@96/32), remove subsonic (-18Hz)
Manual and carefully targeted automatic de-clicking in software. I make sure this doesn’t damage natural clicks.
Occasional use of noise masking techniques such as fading sampled groove noise to mono during track changes, etc.
Normalize whole sides to 100%, Split tracks
FLAC, MD5, M3U, Discogs Tagging, DR, RAR, +Redbook (16-bit dithered in Audition), FTP

This LP’s school report:
A very clean pressing indeed. Virtually silent. Velvet smooth. The way I love it!
The audio is occasionally digitally constructed so on some tracks you’re not getting any significant material above 44100 hz but it was all 24 bit recorded and has higher Dynamic Range than the CD version.

Audio philosophy:
Let the music be! Do nothing you can hear. Take time, care and pay attention to detail. The goal is to allow you to listen to the music without thinking about what you’re listening to it on! Some hope… but I try.