Another Green World

33⅓ Main Series #67

by Geeta Dayal

The serene, delicate songs on Another Green World sound practically meditative, but the album itself was an experiment fueled by adrenaline, panic, and pure faith. It was the first Brian Eno album tobe composed almost completely in the confines of a recording studio, over a scant few months in the summer of 1975. The album was a proof of concept for Eno's budding ideas of "the studio as musical
instrument," and a signpost for a bold new way of thinking about music.

In this book, Geeta Dayal unravels Another Green World's abundant mysteries, venturing into its dense thickets of sound. How was an album this cohesive and refined formed in such a seemingly ad hoc way? How were electronics and layers of synthetic treatments used to create an album so redolent of the natural world? How did a deck of cards figure into all of this? Here, through interviews and archival research, she unearths the strange story of how Another Green World formed the link to Eno's future -- foreshadowing his metamorphosis from unlikely glam rocker to sonic painter and producer.

Genres: Music, Nonfiction, Biography, Art, Criticism, Essays

128 pages, Paperback

First published April 26, 2007

About the author

Geeta Dayal is a prolific journalist and critic, writing on experimental music, art, technology, and culture. She has written extensively for many major publications over the past 15 years, including The Guardian, Wired, The Boston Globe, Frieze, 4Columns, Slate, Rolling Stone, The New York Times, The Village Voice, and Wire.

Reviews

[Alan (the Lone Librarian rides again) Teder · Rating 4 out of 5]

Eno's New World
Review of the Bloomsbury Academic 33 and 1/3 paperback (October 22, 2009) released simultaneously with the eBook.

This is a fairly unorthodox entry in the 33 and 1/3 series of pocket books dedicated to music record albums. Only a single chapter details information about the individual 14 pieces of music on the Brian Eno Another Green World (1975) album. The rest is a discussion of Eno's career up to that point when he began to break away from the rock/pop star career he had since being part of the initial Roxy Music band. Afterwards he became much better known as the so-called godfather of ambient music and the album producer for other artists, especially U2 (The Unforgettable Fire, The Joshua Tree, etc.) and Talking Heads (Fear of Music, Once in a Lifetime, etc.).


Album cover for Another Green World by Brian Eno from 1975. Image sourced from Discogs.

Just as Eno did with his recording, Dayal makes use of the Oblique Strategies set of instructions in the writing of the book, even using some of the card texts as chapter headings. The Oblique Strategies: Over one hundred worthwhile dilemmas* (1975) are a set of offbeat texts printed on cue cards as assembled by Eno together with artist Peter Schmidt. They are to be used as a method of breaking out of an impasse or writer's block in an artist's work.


The painting "After Raphael(?)" (1973) by Tom Phillips (1937-2022). A cropped portion of this painting was used for the album cover of "Another Green World." Image sourced from Pinterest.

I enjoyed this revisit to one of the early precursor albums of ambient music. Curiously, although Dayal details quite a lot of documentation about Eno's career and music, she doesn't mention his composition of the Microsoft Windows 95 opening theme, a piece of music (albeit short) which was probably heard billions of times.

Soundtrack
Listen to the full 14-track Another Green World album via a YouTube playlist which starts here or on Spotify here.

Footnote
* I'm somewhat surprised that the NABers (i.e. Not A Bookers) have not found and deleted this one yet. But perhaps their activities have become more restrained since the NAB Wars of 2020-2021.

[Mike · Rating 2 out of 5]

Given that this is such a great album, I was looking forward to reading this installment of the 33 and 1/3 series. Alas, it was a let-down. The book does a decent job of describing the recording processes of the album and the context of the recording, but it does a superficial job of engaging with the music of the album in a critical way. The author admits that she will avoid a "literary analysis" of the album, which makes sense given that the album is mostly instrumental. But that should not prevent her from trying to devise some kind of analysis that actually fuses with the music. She does attempt this by (apparently) using some of Brian Eno's Oblique Strategies (a randomized series of cards with specific instructions to follow when at an impasse) to organize the book, but the book seems to fall flat without any coherence, as if the author were just lazy. Furthermore, the author's insights typically amount to the kind of trite statements one hears from a fawning fan or a college freshman: "Recently I put the album on after not listening to it for a while. I was really moved by it, playing it over and over and hearing something new in its flow each time. It was like I could see the pathways of all the electronic music that came before it and after it, traveling through that record like so many streams." As can be gleaned from the above quotation, the author tends to overuse metaphors of landscape and terrain to describe the album, which is actually kind of standard practice for most people talking about this album: that each song or piece can be thought of as a "sonic landscape" or "sonic ecology." That so many other people over-use such terminology suggests that I shouldn't fault the author too much in this regard. Nonetheless, the use of such terms is cloying to me because they are too glib and manipulative: it's all too easy to use such terms in order to conjure up a sense of something's moral/aesthetic/economic worth today. "Ooh, Brian Eno was a sonic gardener, thinking 'green' before everyone else." Shut up already! Upon nearing the end of this book, I couldn't help but think of Frank Zappa's characterization of "rock journalism," which arguably can be related to "rock criticism": "people who can't write interviewing people who can't talk for people who can't read." Maybe I just don't know how to read anymore. My advice: just let the album do the talking.

[Costas... · Rating 4 out of 5]

Το Another Green World της Geeta Dayal, από τη δημοφιλή σειρά 33⅓, είναι μια βαθιά και στοχαστική ανάλυση του ομώνυμου εμβληματικού άλμπουμ του Brian Eno από το 1975. Η Dayal προσεγγίζει τον δίσκο όχι απλώς ως μουσικό έργο, αλλά ως ορόσημο καλλιτεχνικής δημιουργίας που αναδεικνύει τη μοναδική προσέγγιση του Eno στη μουσική παραγωγή, στην έννοια του ambient ήχου, αλλά και στη γενικότερη φιλοσοφία του ως καλλιτέχνη.

Η συγγραφέας αποφεύγει σοφά τον απλοϊκό σχολιασμό των κομματιών του άλμπουμ και εξετάζει τον τρόπο με τον οποίο ο Eno επαναπροσδιόρισε τα όρια της μουσικής με την προοδευτική χρήση της τεχνολογίας και τη διαρκή αναζήτηση νέων μορφών έκφρασης πέρα από την μέχρι τότε πεπατημένη. Παράλληλα εξιστορεί πως ο Eno ενσωμάτωσε τις τυχαίες διαδικασίες και τον αυτοσχεδιασμό στην παραγωγή του φανερά επηρεασμένος από την πρωτοπορία του John Cage, δημιουργώντας ένα σύνολο που φαίνεται να συνδυάζει αρμονικά τον ορθολογισμό με τη «μαγεία» του απρόβλεπτου.

Η γραφή της Dayal είναι προσιτή, αλλά παράλληλα πυκνή σε νοήματα και η καλά δουλεμένη ανάλυσή της περιλαμβάνει όχι μόνο τα μουσικά στοιχεία, αλλά και τις πολιτισμικές και φιλοσοφικές επιρροές του Eno. Επιπλέον, φωτίζει μια σημαντική τομή στον τρόπο που η μοντέρνα μουσική μπορεί να εξελιχθεί μέσω των αλληλεπιδράσεων με άλλες μορφές τέχνης καθώς και της επιστήμης.

Για τους θαυμαστές του Eno, το βιβλίο είναι ένα χρήσιμο συμπλήρωμα στο πλούσιο δισκογραφικό έργο του, προσφέροντας πληροφορίες τόσο για το δημιουργικό του όραμα όσο και για τις προκλήσεις που αντιμετώπισε. Συνολικά, με τη μελέτη της η Dayal αποδίδει φόρο τιμής στο συγκεκριμένο έργο του Eno, στη γενικότερη συνεισφορά του στην ambient μουσική, αλλά και στον σύγχρονο πειραματισμό.

[Marc Weidenbaum]

This is an OK book about a great album. The book is only partially about Brian Eno's album Another Green World. Some songs get barely a sentence of direct comment. There's a whole chapter about an entire other Eno album, Discreet Music, and enough general writing about Eno to serve as a mini-biography.

[Gloomy · Rating 4 out of 5]

"Si vas por ahí pensando que hay gente que tiene muchísimo talento, que tiene esas cosas maravillosas en la cabeza, pero que tú no eres uno de ellos, sino que eres alguien normal que nunca podría hacer algo como eso, entonces vives una vida diferente. Podrías tener otro tipo de vida donde dices "vale, sé que las cosas, en gran medida, salen de la nada, y que empiezan a partir de comienzos poco prometedores. Yo soy un comienzo poco prometedor, y podría ser el principio de algo."

[Lindsay · Rating 4 out of 5]

While only one chapter actually delved into an exploration of each song (and even then, some were rather brief), I really enjoyed Dayal's approach to one of my most favorite albums of recent years. I loved her structuring the book around some of the Oblique Strategies and all of the wonderful background placing Another Green World as well as Eno's work in general in context with the pop and new music world. I also appreciate that she stuck to the facts, more or less, no matter how abstract, rather than give a personal account of her relation to the music. AGW is definitely an intimate album, as Dayal well proves here, and I'm glad to keep my experience with it fairly pure, enhanced only by the detail of its creation.

[Tosh · Rating 2 out of 5]

A great iconic landmark album for sure, but this book doesn't convey to me its importance or why its interesting. Maybe some things should be unsaid. Eno tends to like to communicate, but what i like about his early work is a sense of mystery. The problem I have with Eno is that he sort of explains the mystery a way.

Dayal's book is not a bad book, but it's not essential reading either. And I think the 33 1/3 series should always have that intensity and passion. I am sure Dayal has intense feelings for the album, but after reading it I didn't want to hear the record. And usually after reading a book from this series, you want to rush out and hear the work.

[Jo Coleman · Rating 4 out of 5]

All stories about Brian Eno are very cheering, I think. I liked this bit:

" If you walk around with the idea that there are some people who are so gifted - they have these wonderful things in their head but you're not one of them, you're just sort of a normal person, you could never do anything like that - then you live a different kind of life. You could have another kind of life, where you say, well, I know that things come from nothing very much, and start from unpromising beginnings. And I'm an unpromising beginning, and I could start something."

[Lizzy Wizzy · Rating 5 out of 5]

A fascinating and exceedingly well-researched look into Eno’s creative process. Even though I got left in the dust during the more technical and theory-centric portions, I loved this book and wish it were longer!

[Rachel · Rating 2 out of 5]

this is a very mediocre book. but i will give it 2 stars just for how interesting brian eno is.

[Peter · Rating 4 out of 5]

An elegant little book about the creation of one of the most groundbreaking albums ever recorded, Brian Eno's 1975 masterpiece "Another Green World."

[Mitchel · Rating 4 out of 5]

A short, inspiring book about an amazing album, the text also serves as a great introduction to Eno, ambient music, and the nature of creativity. Dayal's book is thoroughly researched and neatly organized, but I felt it could have used another edit, as there are places where the style could have been tightened. The chapter on Steve Reich and the creation of ambient music was especially well done.

A lot of reviewers seem incensed at Dayal because she fails to excavate and argue a grand unified theory of "Another Green World" - as if to say: surely something this beautiful and strange must mean something? But the anger is misplaced, for, as Dayal clearly explicates, Eno's music speaks for itself. As the album and song titles suggest, the album is a kind of aural forest filled with "Dark Trees"; the listener emerges with whatever discoveries they came across - which are, paradoxically, what the listener tacitly hid, and hoped to be found.

[Mason Jones · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is one of the small, short little 33 1/3 books from Continuum, dedicated to the Brian Eno album "Another Green World". I was curious to read the book even though I'm not a huge fan of the album -- it's quite interesting, though, and I hoped that I'd learn some more about the album and pique my curiosity further. I've found it fun to read these books and listen to the albums again and see what more I can get out of them. In this case I found that the book was more about Eno around the time of the album's recording than it was about the album itself. Much of the book winds up being about other albums, particularly "Discreet Music" and Eno's ambient innovations, without sufficiently tying them to the album in question. That's all fine, and the book was a nice read, but it would have been better, I think, if there were more focus on the album and its songs specifically.

[Erik · Rating 2 out of 5]

Theres about 10 pages on Another Green World's tracks. About another 30 pages on the musicians assembled for its recording.

I learned a good amount about brian eno and the contemporary musicians of the time in 1975 and the history of some of the art music movements of hte later 60s. However i learned very ltitle about another green world. Its basically an afterthought. IN this purpose, the book has utterly failed.

This mediocre book made me want to read better books about Brian Eno.

[Zach · Rating 4 out of 5]

...but I'd pretty much love anything about Brian Eno.

[Frank Jude · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is another from the wonderful 33 1/3 series of books published by Bloomsbury. Everything about this series is so well-crafted. I love the smaller size of the books, the uniformity of the design and the freedom given to the various authors. Each is free to find their way through analysis of their chosen album.

Years ago, I wrote an article about the meaning of "records" (especially when they were all vinyl and came with great album art, liner notes and sometimes even more) and Another Green World is for me a record of a specific time in my life that was transitional, and as Geeta Dayal presents her thesis, this album was a transitional one for Brian Eno. In fact, it was here that he went from Eno to Brian Eno.

Dayal takes her time getting to the actual songs on the album. In fact, it's not till Chapter Seven (page 57 of a 105 page book!) that she begins to specifically write about the songs. And this is actually a perfectly nuanced way to approach what is one of the rare perfect albums. 47 years after it's production, it is still as timeless as it was when released. Rare indeed when there is any work of art that seems to transcend its era. Other albums made in 1975, such as Patti Smith's Horses, as important, and wonderful as it is, is clearly of its time. There were no albums like Another Green World at the time of its release and that is as true today as it was then. As Dayal writes: "The more you listen, the more beguiling and open-ended the album becomes. In contrast to many other albums from the mid-1970s, the record doesn't sound dated at all. Another Green World isn't stuck in the past or fixated on the future -- it continues to live its life in the fabric of the present."

Dayal times her time approaching her subject, telling us of her trepidation as well as her profound desire to do this album justice. She researched both deeply and widely and chose not to make this a standard "biography" (as she says, "that's been done several times over") but rather she chose to make this "an exploratory book on the ideas underpinning the music." Which again, given the artist she is writing about, makes complete sense.

And so Dayal writes of Eno's beginnings as an artist interested in cybernetics. She briefly covers his earlier work with Roxy Music and his two "rock" solo albums Here Come The Warm Jets and Taking Tiger Mountain, By Strategy and sets in the context of his later ambient work (this is NOT a linear narrative Dayal offers us).

What sets Another Green World apart is that it was the first time Eno put himself in the position of having to see if his hypothesis that the recording studio could function AS an instrument. While the final product is quite meditative, "all delicately-textured stillness, introspection, and calm repose," the process was "fueled by adrenaline, panic, and pure faith." Eno assembled a crack team of session musicians, along with some stellar creatives as well such as John Cale on viola, Robert Fripp on guitar and Phil Collins on drums. And all Eno had to offer these musicians was "a general idea for a concept, and ideas for instruments to use, but that was it." There were no songs written or prepared before the musicians entered into the studio. Eno worked like a film director, recording, editing, treating, and pasting it all together. And the first weeks were not promising and Eno almost reached the point of cancelling the remainder of the studio time. I guess that's where the faith came in and thankfully, he proved his hypothesis and then some!

The final result was something I would listen to, lying on my bed, through a difficult year after a painful breakup. In the winter, it would be with nothing but candle light flickering in the dark; in the summer, the sultry heat baking in through the windows. It was healing of my heart. For the 40 minutes or so of listening to this balm of an album, a whole new world was created. And as the needle lifted off the last song, "Spirits Drifting" coming after "Everything Merges With The Night," it felt like some of that world had entered into this world, and I felt a bit more at peace.

I leave it to Dayal for the final words of this review:

"The music seems to luxuriate in a vague feeling of melancholia without sounding particularly downcast. It didn't convey any sense of deep depression, but of thoughtful introspection -- a slight distance and dislocation from the world at large, the contemplative state of staring out the window of a moving train and watching trees and highways scroll by.... In its own way, Another Green World was a very tender, emotional record, but nothing about it was impetuous or irrational or excitable; there was no direct punch to the gut."

[Adam · Rating 4 out of 5]

On the typical 33 ⅓ series spectrum, running between breathless fandom on one end and over-serious analysis on the other, this entry plots pleasantly somewhere near the middle. It is a dedicated fan’s love for the album combined with a acasual curiosity of its making and its broader significance. I admire Dayal’s casually graceful presentation of the results of what was clearly extensive research of her subject.

Dayal’s analysis is perfectly suited for someone like me: a head; someone for whom music couldn’t be more important, but also a layman; someone who is wholly ignorant of the science of music, how music is composed, how music is recorded, how records are made, etc. She brings us in just deep enough but not too deep such that it’s over our head.

Often Dayal’s descriptions were resonant with my experience and enchantment with the album:

“Eno’s wide-ranging references–big ships, dark trees–sound exotic, but they all have some footing on Earth. Over the years, Eno has generally preferred to make records that exist On Land, not in space. Instead of propelling us into far-flung galaxies, his music coaches us to reconsider our everyday surroundings. It may be head-music–but it’s not scrambled psychedelia; it’s a gentle drift into a blurred photograph. Hazy childhood memories melt into our discovery of these spaces, as we pin Eno’s points of interest onto our own psychogeographic maps” (2-3).

[Scott · Rating 5 out of 5]

Geeta Dayal does an excellent job talking about Eno, his album, and even the avant-garde art movements that Eno more or less initiated. Even more, she gets into ambient, other albums like Discreet Music, John Cage, Steve Reich, and other experimental music luminaries. It just checked off all of my favorite boxes. And Dayal is such a great writer, I confess that I loved her approach to the whole project. It was a pleasure to read.

[Caleb Sommerville · Rating 2 out of 5]

Meh. I liked the interview segments with Eno himself (and the breakdown of the different collaborators), but Dayal once again falls into the trap that many of these 33 1/3 books do: the compulsion to just add more crap. An entire chapter on a different album, a weird discussion of not-tarot cards, etc.
Just....meh.

[Todd · Rating 5 out of 5]

A gem in the 33 1/3 series. I always thought AGW was an uneven album as a whole, but it offered some very profound ideas. This book highlights those ideas and more. I’m still not sold on AGW where I think Eno’s ideas were still being formulated and a bit scattered. But this book definitely enriched the subject for me.

[Matthew · Rating 3 out of 5]

Meh. I haven’t read a lot about Eno so this was a nice base to get me thinking I’d like to explore more about him. It’s not an incredibly good book about this album though. It’s a BRIEF insight into Eno during the general time he made AGW.

[Daniel · Rating 5 out of 5]

Spanning Brian Eno’s early career and albums, this book focuses mostly on the creative inception of Another Green World. The book attempts to explore the unorthodox recording methods of Brian Eno’s work while also highlighting its legacy and significance in the ambient and indie music word.

[Cody Schell · Rating 3 out of 5]

A solid Eno themed book, enjoyable in that context. It could have used a more solid focus on AGW, and the making of it, which it had just enough of it to keep me interested. But it wasn’t the treasure trove of AGW information I was hoping it would be.

[Tronikyouth · Rating 4 out of 5]

Not super detailed, but good background on Eno's mindset at the time of making the album

[Joris · Rating 5 out of 5]

Great book for anyone interested in Brian Eno and/or the process of creating music.

[Brad · Rating 3 out of 5]

2.5 stars.

[Joe Imwalle · Rating 5 out of 5]

Great insights into the album and the mind of a most important producer and self described “non-musician”. Process! And sound textures. A major influence on me and my band. Aux Meadows.

[Peter Rowe · Rating 2 out of 5]

Vro how r the lyrics to everything merges too sappy - this is too literal but ig that’s was 33 1/3 books r🤦‍♂️

[Kevin McAvoy · Rating 5 out of 5]

Behind the scenes of Eno's masterpiece album.

[Stevens Memorial Library]

Jess finished Brian Eno's Another Green World: 33 1/3!