Another Day on Earth

Overview

This is the first Eno album to chiefly contain vocals in more than two decades. Speaking of the album, Eno said, "The first one I've done like that for a very long time...25 years or so". In addition, he explained his current thoughts on lyrics in music; "Song-writing is now actually the most difficult challenge in music," he confessed.

The music

Eno recorded and mixed most of the album on a Mac, using Logic, over a period of four years. He also engineered it himself, "because otherwise I would have had to spend six years in a commercial studio and pay staff, and that would have become too expensive".

"Bottomliners" and "Under" were first worked on about six years previously, on a DA88, the latter songs' drumming being supplied by Willie Green. On the former, and on the ballad "And Then So Clear" he pitch-shifted his voice up an octave, using the gender-changing function on a Digitech Pro Vocalist creating a vocoder-like effect. His studio features a selection of hardware including a Lexicon Jam Man loop sampler and an Eventide H3000 Harmonizer.

The album is actually built around the "And Then So Clear" song. He says "... In one day, actually, I pretty much finished it ... I liked it so much, and I thought, how I am going release this song, and I thought, I have to write some others."

On the title track he repeatedly cut up the main phrase, so that "the listener had little windows on it." Similar "cut-up" methodologies were used for the lyrics of "This," in that he used his computer to generate some of the words.

"Under" is a nearly-identical version of a song that was on the unreleased 1991 album My Squelchy Life, which was released in 2014 as a bonus disc with a reissue of Eno's 1992 Nerve Net.

For the ambientesque "A Long Way Down" Eno manually synchronised his vocals with an out of time keyboard melody, and on "Going Unconscious" he went back to using Koan generative music software for the textural background.

The distinctions between songs and instrumentals which contain vocals are deliberately blurred, particularly on the track "How Many Worlds": "There's just enough voice in there to make you hear it as a song, making it a bluff, a deceit."

The final track on the album, "Bone Bomb", was inspired by a newspaper story about a Palestinian girl who becomes a suicide bomber. The title refers to a point made by an Israeli doctor that when a suicide bomber detonates, the bomber's bones become shrapnel, adding to the destruction.

Track listing

All songs written and composed by Brian Eno, except where noted.

1. "This" – 3:33
2. "And Then So Clear" – 5:49
3. "A Long Way Down" – 2:40
4. "Going Unconscious" – 4:22
5. "Caught Between" (co-lyrics by Danny Hillis and Eck Ogilvie-Grant) – 4:25
6. "Passing Over" – 4:25
7. "How Many Worlds" (co-lyrics by Michel Faber) – 4:47
8. "Bottomliners" – 3:59
9. "Just Another Day" (additional music composed by Peter Schwalm) – 4:21
10. "Under" – 5:19
11. "Bone Bomb" – 3:09
12. "The Demon of the Mines" (Japan only bonus track) – 4:40

notes

track 7 published by Opal Music, London (PRS) [in N. America & Canada by Upala Music Inc (BMI)], 2005.
tracks 8 & 9 published by Opal Music, London (PRS) [in N. America & Canada by Upala Music Inc (BMI)] and Editions Outshine / BMG-UFA, 2005.
Brian Eno appears courtesy of Opal Ltd.

Personnel

In popular culture

Awards