Brian Eno: Third Uncle

Continuing my list of the Top 20 albums of 1974, coming in at #12 is Taking Tiger Mountain (By Strategy) by Brian Eno. Eno released his first two albums in 1974, and his second was a brilliant follow-up to his first. Plenty has been written about Eno’s early solo recordings (after leaving Roxy Music), but most contemporary reviews of this album were flawed by the simple fact that Eno was so far ahead of his time. Looking back now, nothing sounded like Brian Eno then or now. David Bowie has always been the poster child for artistic rock music in the ’70s, and Roxy Music have created an avid fanbase over the last 50 years, but Eno has always been a difficult nut to crack for most. I think the best way to listen to these first two albums by Brian Eno is to just remove all preconceived notions of what pop music should sound like and let yourself sink into the sounds he was creating. There are plenty of great songs on the record, but I chose “Third Uncle” because it is a great song that doesn’t sound like anything else recorded in 1974.

To learn more about Brian Eno, check out his website. To better understand the recording method invented by Eno in 1974 during the recording of this album, I have copied the following from his Wikipedia page.

To further explore the possibilities of the studio setting, Eno and his friend Peter Schmidt developed instruction cards, called Oblique Strategies. During the recording sessions, he would allow the cards to dictate the next unconsidered action in the recording process. Describing the words on the album as an expression of “idiot glee”, Eno and Schmidt eventually expanded the Oblique Strategies set to over 100 “worthwhile dilemmas”, which would be used in nearly all his future recordings and productions. 

To check out all of the old Faux Show Best of the Year Shows, visit The Year In Review Series page.

To listen to all of the songs of the day, check out the Radio Faux Show Song of the Day playlist.

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