The Drop
	production credits unknown
	Released on July 8, 1997
	US NEW AGE CHART POSITION #17
	Find it at GEMM
thi 66032.2 cover [high resolution scan]

E levator music for the next century. Actually, it’s more like what The Lounge Lizards’ music would sound like rendered in elevator arrangements; the same dissonant, jazzy artiness informs both. Unless you find everything that drops from Eno’s table fascinating (e.g., Music For Films), there’s no reason to pick up The Drop. You’ll find the ivories tinkle more to your liking on Harold Budd’s The Room, the cocktail hour more interesting on The Lounge Lizards’ debut album, the spooky shadows more terrifying with Arto Lindsay. Most of the songs are cut from the same block: random piano keys sprinkled amidst percussion and varying amounts of electrical hum. The fact that I don’t have anything nice to say about Eno’s work in the ‘90s could be translated as misplaced loyalty to the old wonders, but I hope not. Rather, I see a trailblazer who’s wandered into the woods, meandering without direction and obliviously moving backwards. Nothing on here is groundbreaking, and there’s little doubt that more interesting adventures are being related by the armies of ambient artists who followed in Eno’s original footsteps. The Drop simply blurs into the same humid vision of weird electronic cocktail jazz, a strange vision of the future as glimpsed from a 1960’s sci-fi movie. In that sense, the disc does have a retro feel to it, like some failed experiment unearthed from the original synthesizer demo platters of the ‘60s. That I can’t salvage individual tracks should be telling; “M.C. Organ” sort of caught my attention, and “Iced World” is familiar from its uncredited appearance at the end of “Spinner.” Perhaps I’ve hit the wall with The Drop, to be sent back in search of earlier music from the ‘70s and ‘80s rather than scour the parched lands of his present-day music for something to nibble on. Next stop: Apollo.

thi 66032.2 back cover

TRACK LISTING

1. SLIP, DIP
2. BUT IF
3. BELGIAN DROP
4. CORNERED
5. BLOCK DROP
6. OUT/OUT
7. SWANKY
8. COASTERS
9. BLISSED
10. M.C. ORGAN
11. BOOMCUBIST
12. HAZARD
13. RAYONISM
14. DUTCH BLUR
15. BACK CLACK
16. DEAR WORLD
17. ICED WORLD

CREDITS

BRIAN ENO -- music and cover
Marlon Weyeneth -- assistant
Ben Fenner -- music assembly
Nick Robertson -- cover assembly

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