If you've not already caught these reviews from Sweden's Stephen Fruitman (who occasionally posts to Hyperreal's Ambient Mailing List), here are his latest. Stephen's attentive ears and expressive thoughts are appreciated by many, and I'm glad to offer this forum to my e-friend. Brian Eno: Kite Stories (Opal) Yet another museum piece, this time from his installation at the Finnish art gallery Kiasma in Helsinki, Kite Stories is reminiscent of both Lightness, from Brian Eno's St. Petersburg installation, and his last full-length studio ambient release, Neroli (1993). Thinking music, indeed, or perhaps, "gazing" music; one can imagine how it provided the perfect backdrop for the visuals presented at the gallery. Relatively short at thirty minutes, Kite Stories contains three studies using time-stretched voices, synthesizers, bass guitars, Japanese temple bells and sundry other sound sources, a taste of what the twelve CD players randomly programmed and placed in various positions around the gallery offered visitors. In comparison with Eno's other museum recordings, Kite Stories is perhaps not as radical an effort as Music for White Cube, but is a fine document of how his experiments in generative music are progressing. The CD has been issued in a strictly-limited edition of 500, and can be ordered directly from Eno's own label Opal Records. Ordering information is provided by the EnoWeb site. Pablo's Eye: Realismo (Surface to Air) In my mind one of the most thought-provoking ongoing projects of the past decade. Pablo's Eye have evolved throughout the nineties from their song-based, self-titled debut, through multifacetted soundscaping highlights like You Love Chinese Food, to a unique form of quasi-dub experimentation on their last few releases. In between there have been commissions like Barcelona (Architects of), for the 1992 Olympics, the mini-album Devotions, and the music for a CD-ROM on the Holocaust. Realismo is yet another mini-album, this one clocking in at thirty-odd minutes, and can be appreciated as a further extension of the concerns featured on their last full-length, All She Wants Grows Blue (Swim), though without the exotically-inflected vocals of Marie Mandi. Not conventional dub in the JA sense (though they have put that style through its paces in their long cut "The Switchback" on the Extreme tenth anniversary double CD), Realismo stretches sound and explores its every nuance. While imaginative beats have been the engine driving every Pablo's Eye release, instead of propelling the music up into the stratosphere and featuring pristine guitar chords as previously, they now deflect it into echoing underground chasms and allow it to bounce around the walls for a spell. To put a disc by Pablo's Eye on the CD is to embark on an excursion through some fifth world, where understatement is the vehicle for profound adventures in listening. Stephen Fruitman's Reviews were posted here on February 23, 2000.

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