BRIAN ENO – Lux – CD+Prints – WARPCD231

PPI wouldn’t, if I were you, try to experience Lux as music. Brian Eno, the ‘composer’ (I’m not certain if this is the right label for him) of this 76-minute electronic soundscape, is more interested in intelligent design than intuitive composition, in motion than emotion. And yet other reviews I’ve read insist on assessing Lux as though Eno’s trying to further the aesthetic purview of Bruckner, or Derek Bailey, and falling short. Here’s the truth: Lux to its core fulfils the remit of ‘ambient’ music, the term Eno coined for now-classic mid-’70s albums such as ‘Music for Airports’ and ‘Discreet Music’, which fused the principles of Satie’s furniture music with Kraftwerk’s approach to synthesiser technology, via Cage and minimalism.

Philip Clark / Gramophone