Tracks and Traces

There’s a lot to say (or ask?) about what Eno and these three musicians exchanged. From some angles, it looks like Eno boosted a lot of Berlin and Düsseldorf and took it back to England for himself and Bowie: Low, Lodger, Heroes, Music For Airports. (Is Fripp’s whole sound from the Seventies just a variation on Michael Rother?) It is clear that Eno was always good at distilling what made something interesting and cutting down long jams into discrete ideas. Some of the vibes here showed up on Eno records, on other Cluster albums, even Rother’s solo albums. “By The Riverside” goes into the Germanic dub hall of fame: rubber bands stretching out as the cubic zirconia touches the lip of the griddle.