NERVE NET

Around the time that he found ambient music, Eno the musician lost his way. His obsession with tranquil, unobtrusive tonal washes made him unlistenable, except as background music. While he experimented with ambience and tranquility in some of his earlier works, ever since Music For Airports, even his non-ambient albums have been mostly boring.

Eno appears to be making an attempt to get away from that ambient new age rut here, but he mostly fails. What we get here are rhythmss and sounds, no actual composed songs. Some of it is mildly interesting. Most of it is not.

I suppose if I had to select the better tracks, I would choose Juju Space Jazz for it's somewhat interesting sounds, and Ali Click, where Eno actually almost sings. I long for the wordplay he used in the lyrics of his early albums. You get a small amount of that on this one song.

Eno hasn't been a thrilling musical experience for me so far. There were some good albums (five in my rating) and lots of below average to poor ones.

This one definitely belongs to the latter category. It is boring to death almost all the way through. Actually, only the opener could be misleading because it is quite decent. But when you have to face the dreadful and noisy "Wire Shock" or "What Actually Happened" you know that it is quite a poor experience that you have to go through.

The minimalist "Pierre In Mist" isn't any better I'm afraid, nor the jazzy and experimental "Distributed Being". But the whole of this stuff is just insignificant. Repetition can be an asset in music (KS was a master in this technique), but when I listen to the ugly "My Squelchy Life" or "Ali Click" I really doubt about Eno's writing skills. "Press Next" is the ultimate word of course.

The nineties started with a poor album ("Wrong Way Up") and it is followed by another one of the same vein. The decent electronic track "The Roil, The Chooke" is ruined by dull and unexpressive vocals.

And the pain is even prolonged since this album lasts for over an hour! I really wonder it was so necessary to record the "Web" twice? The original was already painful, but the "Lascaux Mix" is just unbearable.

As you can understand, I won't rate this album with more than one star.

Hate and war.