Taking Tiger Mountain (By Strategy)

The blueprint to his work with Talking Heads is on this album. Listen to the jagged guitars, pumping bass and hissing electronic percussion on this and then compare to "More Songs about Buildings and Food". Taking Tiger Mountain like the majority of Eno's output is years ahead of it's time. Being a non-musician he had no regard or pre-conceptions about what and what could not be sonically done. He just did it!

A classic piece of new wave thrashing is "Third Uncle", with Manzanera never sounding so manic. I prefer the version on "801 Live" but there is no denying the intensity and originality on display. The centrepiece of the album is "The True Wheel" with it's wonderfully infectious squelchy electronic backing, fuelled by Manzanera's riffing guitar. The female chorus sing about being the 801 with Eno looking for a certain ratio. Amazing stuff. "China My China IS prototype Talking Heads, with Manzanera showing the way for David Byrne. There is a hint of Eno's impending ambient ambitions on the title track, with its gorgeous Harold Budd-like piano motif.

So, another original, individual album made even more remarkable set against the times in which it was made.

A couple of comments about these re-issues. They are minimally packaged in digipaks which are housed in transparent plastic slip cases. These are not remasters as such, but new transfers taken from the original master tapes using the new Direct Stream Digital (DSD) format. This is state of the art as regards mastering onto compact disc. They have been transferred by Simon Heyworth who is one of the best in the business. He has made statements about the remastering of these recordings. Why change something that was done right originally! Eno was happy with the original mastering so what is needed is just the best transfer onto compact disc that is currently feasible. Whereas the original CD's sounded flat and thin, these transfers are much livelier and offer a fuller, more detailed sound.

Tiger Mountain is Eno's magnum opus. Though Another Green World is probably his stylistic apex, that work lacks Tiger's emotional highs and overall resonance and energy. Though his first solo album redefined what popular music could be, this one puts the polish on that initial redefinition.

From the apoplectic onset of Burning Airlines, one is seduced into a blurry Wonderland of connotation and denotation, meaning and nonsense, wakefulness, dreams and nightmares, where one becomes complicit in one's own confusion until the slow polar sweep of the title track fades out.....Eno's mastery of sonic texture is never more apparent; his alchemical blending of timbres both traditional and novel never more glittering. Having once heard the counterpoint of Robert Wyatt's innocent falsetto and Portsmouth Sinfonia's sweetly off-key cadences, is it possible either to forget Put A Straw Under Baby or to imagine the song scored in any other fashion?

The redolence and wit of the lyrics as well is unsurpassed, invoking a broad nexus of meanings without enforcing any one in particular. Despite their restive refusal to be pinned down, the words are often startlingly memorable. For instance, it is delightful if profitless to speculate upon what piety may be contained in: "There's a brain in the table/There's a heart in the chair/And they all live in Jesus/It's a family affair."

Released in 1974, Tiger Mountain has aged well. Twenty-five plus years later, this creative and influential rock endeavor does not show any signs of staleness. On repeated listenings, new surprises continue to well up from its depths. What more could one ask of any long-term relationship?