Brian Eno – :Neroli: (Thinking Music Part IV)

Listened to this one out in the countryside and it did work very well with the surroundings, chirping birds & crows, some occasional distant dog barks, distant cock crows and a low flying fighter jet. 3.5/5

For me, "Neroli" is the album where Brian Eno nails his ambient manifesto. Eno has described "ambient" as music that should be as ignorable as it is listenable; music that never demands your attention but at the same time rewards your attention should you choose to tune your attention to it.

Much as I love Eno's other "ambient" work, none of it really fulfils his own stated objective for the genre. Ambient 4, Thursday Afternoon, Lux, etc., are all amazing albums and create atmospheres that you want to be inside, but there's no denying that they demand your attention repeatedly. You notice them.

Neroli doesn't do that. The first time I played Neroli, I forgot it was even playing - and then it ended, and there was a void where it had been. You know the way, if there's a power cut, suddenly the silence becomes even more silent, as comforting background noises that you weren't even ing on a conscious level suddenly aren't there anymore, and you only really become aware that they were there by their absence, and you miss that background sound now it isn't there anymore? That's how it was with Neroli.

That's true ambient music.

This is one of my favorites from Eno. Such nothing in such a meaningful way. I often have this on repeat and feeling like I'm floating

Did this ever make it to a vinyl release? I cannot seem to find on discogs if there was a 2LP release on All Saints?

This is a great piece of music, and it fulfils its title function very well. I've been listening to it while studying & it has made that a much more tolerable, even enjoyable, experience.

As far as the whole modal decription is concerned, to clarify matters a mode is a 'scale within a scale', that is to say a scale derived from the interior notes of a 'normal' scale eg. from the 3rd to the 3rd (Phrygian) or the 5th to the 5th (Mixolydian). There are seven basic modes, one for each note of the standard Western major/minor scale. The major scale could be considered the 'Ionian' mode and the natural minor is the 'Aeolian' mode. The phrygian mode which is utilised in this piece is more simply described as a natural minor mode with a flattened 2nd degree. Modality has nothing to do with chord construction techniques.

Modal means that a tune is not based on a common major or minor chord, but on a 6th or 7th, for example. So the base notes are not 3 (triad) but 4. It's more or less this.

&quot;Neroli&quot; is modal. In this case the mode is the Phrygian, whose flattened second evokes the Moorish atmosphere alluded to in the title&quot; …boy, I feel stupid sometimes! If you know what this means, please let me know as I really would like to understand.<BR>
I do understand however that once again this is delightful sound (it’s nothing more then a piano, toggled every so many seconds) that brings you to the boundaries of music and gives you the choice as to actually listen to the music or just undergo it. I prefer the last one and put Neroli on while working or reading and it always manages to enhance the atmosphere so much with so little. <BR> This is definitely of Eno’s best work.

":Neroli:" is a modal piece, like "Music for Airports", "The Plateaux of Mirror", "On Land", etc. The result is atmosphere, ambience... It seems this CD has been used during childbirth in some maternity hospitals.