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ENO & HYDE: HIGH LIFE

Brian Eno

Progressive Electronic


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Brian Eno Eno & Hyde: High Life album cover
3.14 | 20 ratings | 2 reviews | 20% 5 stars

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Studio Album, released in 2014

Songs / Tracks Listing

1. Return (9:00)
2. DBF (4:14)
3. Time To Waste It (8:19)
4. Lilac (9:24)
5. Moulded Life (4:55)
6. Cells & Bells (7:41)

Total time 43:33

Line-up / Musicians

- Brian Eno / synths, Fx, guitar (2,5), organ (2,3), Groovebox (2,3,5), lead (1,4,6) & backing vocals, producer
- Karl Hyde / guitars, bass (4), Groovebox (1), backing vocals

With:
- Fred Gibson / keyboards (2,6), drums (3), electric percussion (2,4), bass synth (5), Fx (6), backing vocals (4)
- Leo Abrahams / guitar (3,5,6), bass (2)
- Marianna Champion / backing vocals (1)

Releases information

Artwork: Brian Eno

2xLP Warp Records ‎- WARPLP255 (2014, UK) With 2 bonus tracks

CD Warp Records ‎- WARPCD255 (2014, UK)

Thanks to mbzr48 for the addition
and to Quinino for the last updates
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BRIAN ENO Eno & Hyde: High Life ratings distribution


3.14
(20 ratings)
Essential: a masterpiece of progressive rock music(20%)
20%
Excellent addition to any prog rock music collection(30%)
30%
Good, but non-essential (30%)
30%
Collectors/fans only (10%)
10%
Poor. Only for completionists (10%)
10%

BRIAN ENO Eno & Hyde: High Life reviews


Showing all collaborators reviews and last reviews preview | Show all reviews/ratings

Collaborators/Experts Reviews

Review by admireArt
PROG REVIEWER
3 stars Too much, too soon!

After all the 3 months ago first release by Brian Eno & Karl Hyde "Someday World" 2014, included an additional "bonus"disc. So, this second (?) release "High Life", 3 months later, seems and feels like an album of songs which came in third in their personal pickings .

The album repertoire (6 songs) sounds more like an Eno's self-tribute, than a 2 musician collaboration. Yeah! Maybe Hyde's "electronic funky" fondness matches that of Eno's, but as far as new proposals, there are really none.

Maybe with a bit more time, they could actually have found some new "music lines", who knows?

Ok ! It is not bad, but it just reinforces the quiet well established Brian Eno's "sonic" discoveries. Like his endeavors with Daniel Lanois and U2's electric guitar "fast-droning" sound, in their 'Joshua Tree's" (1987) record, as sound engineers and collaborators (i,e. track one "Return" ). I suppose it is focused more for Underworld's not-knowledgeable of his existence audiences, than for more aquainted with his work followers .

Anyway, this effort in fact should have been the "Someday's World's" bonus disc, and that release, a one disc release! As such, it all seems quiet greedy, therefore deceiving and somehow disappointing!

***3 flat PA stars. (The five star song, because there is one, is "Cells & Bells", track 6.)

Review by Neu!mann
PROG REVIEWER
3 stars One of the more enjoyable and accessible of Brian Eno's recent efforts has its roots in the fertile soil he was cultivating with David Byrne in the early '80s, updated to a modern digital vernacular. A few of the songs ("DBF" being the obvious example) could have been outtakes from the "Remain in Light" album sessions, and the artwork itself is a visual echo of Peter Saville's video image on the cover of the Eno/Byrne classic "My Life in the Bush of Ghosts".

But this was 2014, not 1981, and much of the new album sounds like it was composed and performed on laptop computers, with minimal human input on traditional instruments. On the other hand, when the end results are so playful and creative does it really matter how they were generated? For an artist once known as a self-confessed funkophobe (in his immediate post-Roxy Music adolescence), Eno certainly has his groove on here.

Not for the first time, of course. He embraced Funk and Afrobeat rhythms long ago, with the Talking Heads and other kindred spirits, but rarely to such a plugged-in degree. I defy even the clumsiest left-footed Proghead to hear the bouncy "Time to Waste It" or the more upbeat "Lilac" and resist the temptation to oscillate his hips, just a little.

In the end it's a fascinating detour for the otherwise ambient artisan, and definitely a collaboration. Eno's finger (and voice) prints are all over the album, and yet he's often the second banana next to guitarist and Grooveboxer Karl Hyde (yes, the Groovebox is a real thing: part drum machine, part sequencer, part computer hard drive). Not to worry, though: he may have only been along for the ride, but Eno was still the primary navigator, as always demonstrating his unerring sense of musical direction.

[ Consumer endorsement: the vinyl edition of the album is by far the best bargain, and not just for old-time's sake. It includes two songs omitted from the CD, for no apparent reason except, of course, the demands of petty commerce. The first ("On a Grey Day") is a dreamy ballad and soundscape collage, crooned with melodic resignation; the second ("Slow Down, Sit Down & Breathe") presents a more urgent and aggressive electro-pop thing, with deadpan spoken vocals atop a busy rhythm guitar. Both would have fit on the compact disc, with room to spare ]

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