FINDING SHORE
by TOM ROGERSON WITH BRIAN ENO

Eno manipulates keyboardist: unique, interesting, but a bit chilly

By Rick Hines, Aug. 22, 2019

Keyboardist plays music, Brian Eno does stuff to it. How is this work with Tom Rogerson different from Eno's work with Harold Budd, which could be described the same way?

In the Budd-Eno works The Plateux of Mirror and The Pearl, Eno seems to have recorded Budd playing piano. He then subjected the recordings to a series of treatments to enhance the sound. All the electronic trickery was used to counterintuitively make the piano music sound even more, well, analog and ambient. The electronics, even though in-your-face, were almost transparent.

Here with Tom Rogerson, Eno seems to have had Rogerson play some type of MIDI keyboard. The electronics are no longer used to shape acoustic sounds, they are used to create the sounds. The result is almost the opposite of the Budd albums: a very electronic synthesized sound.

The treatments result in the keyboardist sometimes sounding like a programmed sequencer. At other points, showers of notes form a sort of Baroque filling of space. There is a notable pull between Rogerson improvising and notes being pulled out to form synthesized rhythmic backgrounds.

Overall, it's an interesting Brian Eno experiment. For my personal tastes, I prefer hearing Eno work with natural sounds, as he seems to have a very unique talent for making normal things sound otherworldly. The highly synthesized nature of the sounds here are a bit cold despite the keyboard pyrotechnics Rogerson puts into it.

This is not one of Eno's major works, but it is unique in that it sounds like nothing else he's been involved with. It's a worthwhile addition to an Eno collection, but not the place to start. I don't know anything about Rogerson, but based on this, I'd like to hear the two pair up again.