Taking Tiger Mountain (By Strategy)
Eno's second solo album: a core band, a title taken from a Chinese revolutionary opera, and the sessions where the Oblique Strategies cards took shape.
Brian Eno, 1974
- Released
- November 1974
- Recorded
- September 1974
- Studio
- Island Studios, London
- Label
- Island
- Producer
- Brian Eno
Where the debut used sixteen guests, this album used a core band: Eno on keyboards and guitar, Phil Manzanera on guitar, Brian Turrington on bass, Freddie Smith on drums and Robert Wyatt on percussion, with Andy Mackay and the Portsmouth Sinfonia on some tracks and Phil Collins adding drums to "Mother Whale Eyeless". Rhett Davies engineered. The title comes from postcards of the Chinese revolutionary opera Taking Tiger Mountain by Strategy, and Eno and Peter Schmidt developed the Oblique Strategies cards during the sessions. Schmidt also designed the sleeve from four of his lithographs.
"Burning Airlines Give You So Much More" was inspired by a 1974 Turkish Airlines crash near Paris, and "The Fat Lady of Limbourg" is about an asylum in Limbourg, Belgium. Manzanera also co-wrote "The True Wheel". The album produced no singles and did not chart in Britain or the United States. Christgau gave it an A-minus, and Virgin reissued it in 2004.
Track listing
- Burning Airlines Give You So Much More3:15
- Back in Judy's Jungle5:14
- The Fat Lady of Limbourg5:05
- Mother Whale Eyeless6:00
- The Great Pretender5:10
- Third Uncle5:01
- Put a Straw Under Baby3:28
- The True Wheel5:20
- China My China5:45
- Taking Tiger Mountain6:00
Personnel
- Brian Eno vocals, keyboards, guitar, producer
- Phil Manzanera guitar
- Brian Turrington bass
- Freddie Smith drums
- Robert Wyatt percussion
- Rhett Davies engineer
More from Brian Eno
Here Come the Warm Jets (1974), Another Green World (1975), Before and After Science (1977), Ambient 1: Music for Airports (1979), My Life in the Bush of Ghosts (1981), Apollo: Atmospheres and Soundtracks (1983), The Pearl (1984)