Tidal change and blissful ambience aided by Eno
Finding Shore
Tom Rogerson with Brian Eno (Dead Oceans) Improv pianist and British experimental rock band Three Trapped Tigers’ frontman Tom Rogerson teams up with former Roxy Music legend, esteemed record producer and self-proclaimed “non-musician” Brian Eno on this ambient collaboration, for 48 minutes and 48 seconds of the kind of sonic experimentation that the latter is known and loved for.
Eno is always a man to confound expectations, and it is delightfully appropriate that a chance meeting outside a toilet at a gig should have led to the duo getting together with a Moog Piano Bar – a device that trains infra-red beams onto Rogerson’s keyboard and generates digital sound when the beam is broken by pressing a key – to make a record.
The result is a sonic landscape that brings together the classical, jazz and electronic ambient genres in a record that, while not the most immediately accessible, will reward perseverance. Unusually among Eno’s recent work, the album is divided into 13 distinct tracks rather than one long ambient noise, but this allows the album to switch moods at will, from the spacious whimsy of opener Idea of Order at Kyson Point to the more threatening staccato chops of March Away or the blissed-out beauty of An Iken Loop.
Despite his stature, Eno is rightly given second billing on the album – he comes on heavy with the squeaks, bleeps and electronic dirge when necessary, but he can also recognise when to step back and allow Rogerson’s piano to take control.
There is little in the way of traditional song structure – no vocals; barely even any discernible rhythms for much of the album – but certain themes and phrases do repeat and give shape to the whole experience.
Finding Shore isn’t an easy album. The frequent changes in mood and Rogerson’s ofturgent piano playing sets it aside from more meditative ambient background noise, while at the other end of the spectrum, piano purists may be put off by the experimental nature. Listen with an open mind, though, and you will find that the album warrants repeated, rewarding plays.
Chris Newbould