Brian Eno – 'Small Craft On A Milk Sea' review
Brian Eno on Warp should be a match made in heaven, and indeed the heavens are where much of Small Craft On A Milk Sea lingers, beginning and ending with sections that evoke the record’s title with poetic ease. Thankfully, though, Eno’s first lyric-free record for seven years isn’t entirely smothered in celestial lube, and indeed its grubbier corners are its most remarkable. Elegantly sequenced into five three-song segments, each with distinct moods, the album is gratifyingly simple to navigate, making Eno’s diversions first into tribal techno and then a swaggering kind of broken two-step pleasingly digestible.
That’s not to say that Small Craft isn’t a full-bodied, intense experience – it is – but it also has a lightness of touch, grace, and a substantial kind of beauty that, in its more mud-flecked moments, roots it firmly in the real world.
8/10
