On the blurb about this CD at the enoshop.co.uk site, Eno cites Robert Fripp and compares his own views to Fripp's. I think there are some stark comparisons between Eno's web presence/independent shop and Fripp's. The latter gets 9/10 in my scorebook; Eno gets 2/10.
It starts even with the website addresses: Eno's is a shop, no more, no less; Fripp's is called DGM Live, which is less personality-centric, though the site itself has much more personality, mainly because it is live. It has regular updates, including Fripp's Diary and a podcast with free downloads. All the downloads are available in MP3 and FLAC format, with previews, and the sampling rate is specified (it's good quality), while the prices of CDs at least are reasonable.
Pretty much none of that applies to Eno's site. His fan resources used to be much better: there was an irregular newsletter called Opal Information, which included news and the kind of Eno essays that ended up in the appendices of A Year with Swollen Appendices. I'm sure it was through Opal Information that I first got interested in other people on Eno's record label, like Hugo Largo. But that came to an abrupt stop ten or so years ago, without explanation.
So I've only made one order at enoshop, and this was part of it. Had the CDs been more reasonably priced — this is, after all, an album of leftovers — I might have got more, but I had to select more or less at random and went for Volume II of the Curiosities instead of Volume I. What's curious about these tracks is how little they inspire my curiosity. Oh yes, when I was young Eno albums used to draw me in, enticing and convincing that further listens would reveal layer upon layer of richness and complexity.
There's another comparison between Eno and Fripp in the music. This album has a beatless ambient track called Church that reminds me of Fripp's recent 'churchscape' recordings, live improvisations performed in churches from St Paul's to Estonia. Eno describes himself as an "evangelical atheist" while Fripp is unashamed to be making devotional music. At the moment I'm finding more sustenance in Fripp's recent output. I wouldn't have predicted that 15 years ago.
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