Another Day on Earth

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Another Day on Earth
Another Day on Earth cover
Studio album by Brian Eno
Released June 13, 2005 (UK, Europe)
June 14, 2005 (U.S.)
Recorded Home Studio
Genre Rock
Length 46:50
Label Hannibal Records
Producer(s) Brian Eno
Professional reviews
Brian Eno chronology
Wrong Way Up
(1990)
Another Day on Earth
(2005)
...


Another Day on Earth is an album by Brian Eno, released in 2005 on Hannibal Records.

Contents

[edit] Overview

This is the first Eno album to chiefly contain vocals in more than two decades. Speaking of the album, Eno said, "The first one I've done like that for a very long time...25 years or so". In addition, he explained his current thoughts on lyrics in music; "Song-writing is now actually the most difficult challenge in music," he confessed.

"It's very easy to make music now but lyrics are really the last very hard problem in music. What I think lyrics have to do is engage a certain part of your brain in a sort of search activity so your brain wants to say, 'Here are some provocative clues as to what this song might be about'."

[edit] Track listing

  1. "This"
  2. "And Then So Clear"
  3. "A Long Way Down"
  4. "Going Unconscious"
  5. "Caught Between"
  6. "Passing Over"
  7. "How Many Worlds"
  8. "Bottomliners"
  9. "Just Another Day"
  10. "Under"
  11. "Bone Bomb"
  12. "The Demon of the Mines" (Japan only bonus track)

[edit] The music

(See Miscellanea for citations)
Eno recorded and mixed most of the album on a Mac, using Logic, over a period of four years. He also engineered it himself, "because otherwise I would have had to spend six years in a commercial studio and pay staff, and that would have become too expensive".

"Bottomliners" and "Under" were first worked on about six years previously, on a DA88, the latter songs' drumming being supplied by Willie Green. On the former, and on the ballad "And Then So Clear" he pitch-shifted his voice up an octave, using the gender-changing function on a Digitech Pro Vocalist creating a vocoder-like effect. His studio features a selection of hardware including a Lexicon Jam Man loop sampler and an Eventide H3000 Harmonizer.

The album is actually built around the "And Then So Clear" song. He says "... In one day, actually, I pretty much finished it ... I liked it so much, and I thought, how I am going release this song, and I thought, I have to write some others".

On the title track he repeatedly cut up the main phrase, so that "the listener had little windows on it". Similar "cut-up" methodolgies were used for the lyrics of "This", in that he used his computer to generate some of the words.

For the ambientesque "A Long Way Down" Eno manually synchronised his vocals with an out of time keyboard melody, and on "Going Unconscious" he went back to using Koan generative music software for the textural background.

The distinctions between songs and instrumentals which contain vocals are deliberately blurred, particularly on the track "How Many Worlds" .... "There's just enough voice in there to make you hear it as a song, making it a bluff, a deceit".

[edit] Credits

  • Photography, Cover Design, Loop : Brian Eno
  • Keyboards : Jon Hopkins
  • Guitar : Leo Abrahams
  • Violin : Duchess Nell Catchpole
  • Drums : Willie Green
  • Vocals : Aylie Cooke
  • Mastering : Simon Heyworth

[edit] Miscellanea

  • The album was chosen as one of Amazon.com's Top 100 Editor's Picks of 2005.
  • The 2005 psychological thriller The Jacket features excerpts from "Going Unconscious", and an alternate mix of "The Demon Of The Mines" (from the Japanese edition).
  • A slightly longer version of "And Then So Clear" was played on Echoes (syndicated on US NRI stations) in November & December 2003.
  • "Under" dates back to 1991's aborted, unreleased My Squelchy Life album, and was featured on the live-action/animated film Cool World soundtrack. It was also present on the Eno Box II: Vocals album.
  • "Bone Bomb" was inspired by a newspaper story about a Palestinian girl who becomes a suicide bomber.
  • Eno attributes the melancholy sound of the album to his age. The mood comes from "realizing that your life is finite. You don't realize this when you're 23, when it seems to be endless".

[edit] Charts

USA

Year Chart Peak position
2005 Top Electronic Albums #13
2005 Top Independent Albums #33

[edit] External links

Brian Eno
Discography
with Roxy Music Roxy Music | For Your Pleasure
Solo albums: Here Come the Warm Jets | Taking Tiger Mountain By Strategy | Discreet Music | Another Green World | Before and after Science | Music for Airports | Music for Films | Thursday Afternoon | The Shutov Assembly | Nerve Net | Neroli | The Drop | Another Day on Earth
with Robert Fripp: Fripp & Eno (No Pussyfooting) | Evening Star | Air Structures (bootleg) | The Essential Fripp and Eno | The Equatorial Stars | The Cotswold Gnomes
with Cluster: Cluster & Eno | After the Heat | Begegnungen | Begegnungen II | Harmonia: '76: Tracks and Traces
Other collaborations: June 1, 1974 | 801 Live | The Plateaux of Mirror | Day of Radiance | Fourth World, Vol 1: Possible Musics | Fourth World, Vol 2: Dream Theory in Malaya | My Life in the Bush of Ghosts | Ambient #4, On Land | Apollo: Atmospheres and Soundtracks | Music For Films Volume 2 | Textures | The Pearl | Hybrid | Music for Films III | Wrong Way Up | Wah Wah | Spinner | Original Soundtracks 1 | Music for Onmyo-Ji | Drawn from Life
Installations/Compilations etc: The Great Learning | The Portsmouth Sinfonia Plays the Popular Classics | Hallelujah! The Portsmouth Sinfonia Live at the Royal Albert Hall | June 1, 1974 | Peter and The Wolf | Working Backwards 1983-1973 |More Blank Than Frank/Desert Island Selection | My Squelchy Life | Robert Sheckley's In a Land of Clear Colours | Box I | Box II | Headcandy | [Generative Music 1 | Extracts from Music for White Cube | Lightness: Music for the Marble Palace | I Dormienti | Kite Stories | Music for Civic Recovery Centre | Compact Forest Proposal | January 07003-Bell Studies | Curiosities Volume 1 | Curiosities Volume 2 | 77 Million Paintings
Publications
A Year with Swollen Appendices | I Dormienti
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