Brian Eno - Evening Star

Evening Star

"Evening Star" is a profoundly different record than "No Pussyfooting"; mostly gentle, more familiar, more naïve and approachable and still valuable for "An Index Of Metals" (oi! why cap the preposition?). The four loopy pieces that comprised the original side one offer an exemplary demonstration of Eno's early adherence to his ideals of dilettantism, here elevated and made exceptional by Fripp's virtuosic taste, timing and play.
But the importance and crux of Evening Star remains the less pretty, more profound half-hour that is occupied by "An Index Of Metals". The piece demonstrates a singular, uncanny and successful hybridization of the usually locked timbral stillness of looped constructs with a genuinely compelling and suite-like structure - let's say "deliberate" instead of purely "self-deterministic" - built upon recognizable themes and restatement. It also manages to immediately and happily dilute the meaning of "ambient" by playing into foregrounds and backgrounds, inviting active listening. This degree of working-out has not been heard on Fripp and Eno pieces before or since, and one suspects that "Index" in particular belongs much more to Fripp than to Eno. Pun or not, "Index" is now indexed to allow direct access to its 6 distinct "movements", a level of functionality that's nice, but not necessary since the piece is best heard as a whole. Broken up, it takes on an air of disappointment not unlike the experience of listening to those edited versions of "Starless" that keep turning up on King Crimson compilations. It's a coherent piece of music people, listen to it!