BEEP discografie entry for Neroli
Neroli
Brian Eno

click on image to enlarge
Year: 1993
Categorie: Solo/Ambient
Cover Art Credits:
Producer info:
Brian Eno
Recording Location info:
Wilderness Studios, 
Suffolk, UK
Catalog info:
CD:All Saints Records   
   Caroline 6600-2
Was issued in Japan as
      POCP-1325 as 
'Neroli' and as 
'Gull Twilight'
More Covers: M
Tracks:
1.- Neroli             57:58 <--  ALSO  <--  sound 



Additional information:
:NEROLI:
(Thinking Music Part IV)
Composed and performed by Brian Eno
Following are the liner notes from this record:

Brian Eno's experiments with 'functional music' 
really got under way in 1975 with the release of 
"Discreet Music 1", a thirty minute piece formed 
from the cyclic overlay and resulting 
permutations of two melodies of different 
duration.The result, in that case, was a tapestry 
of shifting harmonic clusters - a moire', 
simultaneously static and changing. As a  listening 
experience, it remains distinctive: calm, still 
and  deep, yet always slowly evolving,it gives one 
the sensation  of witnessing the unfolding of an 
organic process.

It was this organic quality of movement-in-
stasis the Eno was  to develop in later pieces such 
as "Muisc For Airports"  (1978)  and "Thursday 
Afternoon" (1985).  All these pieces are systems  
based: that is to say, their compositions are not 
specified in  note-to-note detail, but are the 
results of the operation of  particular patterning 
processes on particular materials.  In  this sense 
the works can be seen as modelling themselves on  
natural processes, or as John Cage put 
it,"imitating Nature  in its manner of operation".

Like many of Eno's systems pieces, "Neroli" is 
modal.  In this  case the mode is the Phrygian, 
whose flattened second evokes  the Moorish 
atmosphere alluded to in the title.  In this mode  
the seventh is also flattened, and the combination 
of these  unusual intervals createsa mysterious 
tonal ambiguity.This  is further emphasised in 
"Neroli", because the rootnote of  the mode is 
rarely played, whereas the fifth of the scale is  
prominent.  Together, the blurred tonality and the 
lack of a  distinct tonal centre give the piece a 
hovering, weightless  character.  The melodic 
line, with little forward momentum and  no sense 
of pulse, disperses and coalesces into exotic new  
constellations.  Eno says: "I wanted to make akind 
of music  that existed on the cusp between 
melody and texture, and whose  musical logic was 
elusive enough to reward attention, but not  so 
strict as to demand it".  As with his other works 
in this  area, this music readily recedes into 
pure texture,  atmosphere, ambience.  And it is in 
this space- "at the edge  of music", as Eno 
describes it - that there exists the  possibility 
of another kind of music, and other ways of  
listening.

             C. S. J. Bofop, March 1993


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