ANOTHER GREEN WORLD

When people talk about Another Green World, they tend to bring up its relevance, how it managed to do so much for both rock and electronica, how there had never really been anything like it before it came out, etc.

That stuff doesn't really interest me. What I think makes this album a masterpiece isn't its cultural relevance or influence, it's the emotion, it's the way Eno can make you want to cry with the flick of a switch or the push of a button. It's the way in which he manipulates electronic sounds, rock instrumentation and even occasionally world music to create something that is not unlike art in its purest form.

To borrow from occasional music reviewer Tucker Stone, there's a quality to Eno's music that turns seasoned, scholarly critics into blithering fools and slack-jawed morons into wizened sages. There's a fragility to Another Green World that's hard to put into words. The way in which it manages to empathize with the listener and instill them with hope and wonderment, not with words but with sounds, is something close to magic. Across Krautrock, across the electronic spectrum, across the rock world, I haven't encountered anything like this, music that can express feeling with noise in such a way as to make the listener swoon.

When I was very young, maybe 15 or so, I heard this album for the first time. I had no love for electronica and absolutely no experience with "experimental" or even non-linear music. But this was something different. In the cold of night, headphones on, nestled beneath the covers of my bed, I could wonder about myself, hope and fear for the world around me, and feel like a friend was by my side, listening and reciprocating every word.

That's the magic of Another Green World, I think. Just as much as it's music you listen to, it is music that listens back.