Brian Eno – Drums Between the Bells

Drums Between the Bells is the latest in Brian Eno’s long list of collaborative works, kick-started in 2003 with poet Rick Holland and featuring a revolving door of similar contributors. It is, on the whole, highbrow and seemingly humourless ponderings on inner-consciousness and the nature of reality. All fine and well, but fifteen such variations quickly gets tiresome and in the case of the six-form philosophising of The Real, near-interminable.

It distracts from Eno’s contributions which are generally fine fare, save the odd inexplicable curveball such as Sounds Alien with its industrial guitar, beats and awful brass codas. Of course, Drums is an experiment, a collaborative exploration or “three-dimensional instantiations” in Eno’s own words. Make of that what you will, and, while there certainly are elements of the experiment that work and may be worthy of a little more research time, it would be hard to call the whole endeavour a success. [Darren Carle]