Before and After Science

Two years, a hundred songs and ten survivors: one side of oblique art rock, one side of pastoral ocean music.
Brian Eno, 1977

Released
December 1977
Studio
Basing Street, London; Conny's Studio, Cologne
Label
Polydor (Island in the US)
Producer
Brian Eno and Rhett Davies
Length
39:30

Play on hypersongs

Unlike his quickly made earlier song albums, this took about two years. Eno wrote more than a hundred songs, using his Oblique Strategies cards, and kept ten; the first side is wiry, rhythmic art rock with players including Phil Collins, Percy Jones, Robert Fripp, Fred Frith and Jaki Liebezeit, the second slow and atmospheric, which Eno contrasted with Another Green World's sky music as ocean music. Robert Wyatt plays under the pseudonym Shirley Williams, King's Lead Hat is an anagram of Talking Heads, and By This River was recorded in Conny Plank's Cologne studio with Cluster. Eno told NME that only now was anything like a love song starting to appear in his work.

It barely charted. Robert Christgau said that calling it disappointing was complaining it was not transcendent, and Pitchfork's 2017 review gave it ten out of ten.

Track listing

  1. No One Receiving3:52
  2. Backwater3:43
  3. Kurt's Rejoinder2:55
  4. Energy Fools the Magician2:04
  5. King's Lead Hat3:56
  6. Here He Comes5:38
  7. Julie With...6:19
  8. By This River3:03
  9. Through Hollow Lands3:56
  10. Spider and I4:10

More from Brian Eno

My Life in the Bush of Ghosts (1981), Apollo: Atmospheres and Soundtracks (1983), The Pearl (1984)

Sources

  1. Before and After Science, Wikipedia
  2. Before and After Science (Polydor LP), Discogs
  3. Eno interview, NME, November 1977, More Dark Than Shark