[.ca] Spinner

From Amazon.co.uk:
Composed as the soundtrack for a Derek Jarman film, this is in large part a return to the placid atmospheric style of Brian Eno's Another Green World period. Jah Wobble's role is limited to providing a bass rumble, though he cranks up the tempo deliciously on "Unusual Balance" and the tracks featuring ex-Can drummer Jaki Liebeziet. A gift from the ambient God for hard-core Enophiles. --Jeff Bateman

Amazon.com essential recording:
Composed as a soundtrack for a Derek Jarman film, this is in large part a return to the placid atmospheric style of Brian Eno's Another Green World period. Jah Wobble's role is limited to providing a bass rumble, though he cranks up the tempo deliciously on "Unusual Balance" and the tracks featuring ex-Can drummer Jaki Liebeziet. A gift from the ambient God for hard-core Enophiles. --Jeff Bateman

ooooh.... synths and then bass... and then, more synths....:
only kidding but that's what it is.. It's typical ENO instrumentals with JAH WOBBLE doing some basslines along with his band. Not every track has wobble but most of them do. Unfortunately, there are better bass lines in Wobble's other works. There's NO vocals so this is a nice Cd to get romantic with or under the covers with your lover. It's sinister at times, romantic at other times but always atmospheric.

Beautiful ambient on bass and synthesizer:
This is a good ambient album, but not Eno's best. With his collaborator, Jah Wobble, he's written and recorded a series of gentle, elegant instrumentals. The music is an interplay of bass guitar, synthesizers, and subtle percussion. Most of the songs are full of repetition, but they never feel that way. Eno has a knack for making simple music sound beautiful *because* it's so simple --- he never bores you or takes the easy way out by just repeating the same thing over and over. If you haven't heard Eno's ambient work before, I suggest you start with "The Pearl" or "Music for Airports" first. If you like those, you'll like this.

An Ominous Masterpiece:
...I consider Spinner to be one of the best Eno albums of the 90's. It has a sense of menace, an implied threat, a deep brooding quality, that seems to change with every listening. It's always compelling, always dark, but I sense different undertones and patterns each time I play it. Wobble's bass is simply incredible. One listen will be enough to make your subwoofer pay for itself three times over. I suspect a cheap sub will simply distort on these notes, but a good unit will simply blow you away. I cannot tell you how many times I've listened to this album, but I do know that every listening experience seems even better than the ones before.

A most interesting mixture:
Here's the deal: Brian Eno does soundtrack bits for one of British filmmaker Derek Jarman's final productions, "Glitterbug". Then Eno turns over said tracks to dub/world-meister Jah Wobble for further tinkering. Result: amazing! This is one of those instances where the mysterious and elusive 'third mind' that so many have spoken of in quality collaborative work has come out in force and created something that's perhaps a bit beyond the scope of either of the two participants, taken alone. The 'action' here keeps moving, in a very cinematic manner, throughout the tracks that make up this release, and you get the feeling of being drawn along in a complex musical journey through spaces that seem at once familiar and suddenly very alien. Signposts do appear: a dub bassline here, a North African snippet there, and tinges of ambience and senses of drama that seem to even hearken back to Eno circa "Another Green World" color the skies of this strange landscape. Of the recent Eno works, this and "The Shutov Assembly" are the definite peaks, and for my money, this is Eno at perhaps his best form since "AGW" or his collaborative albums with Cluster, David Byrne, or Jon Hassell. An excellent argument piece for those who think Eno's 'lost it' in all of his attentions to pop production during the 1980s and 90s.

A hot album!:
I got this CD for Christmas a few years back, was living in London at the time. It was of course quite cold. I listened to it and thought it was a reasonable album - 3 or 4 star job. Nothing spectacular, just a nice album to be played occassionally. Then I discovered something odd. I was playing it on a very, very hot day and it suddenly fit so much better - it just seems to capture the mood of a slow, hot day, or even better a slow hot night. The hotter and more sultry it gets, the more I like listening to this album. I know it sounds odd, and I don't have any other albums that are "weather dependent", but there you go...

• Where We Lived
• Like Organza
• Steam
• Garden Recalled
• Marine Radio
• Unusual Balance
• Space Diary 1
• Spinner
• Transmitter and Trumpet
• Left Where It Fell