This is, quite rightly, one of the most eagerly awaited albums of the year – and it doesn’t disappoint in any way. Above everything it proves how wrong we are to pigeon hole Brian Eno as an ambient producer. ‘Small Craft On A Milk Sea’ shows he is so much more than that, with an air of unmistakeable tension hanging over the early, beatless instrumentals, before suddenly the tempo gets wrenched upwards, the music flying by the seat of its pants in ‘2 Forms Of Anger’ and ‘Paleosonic’ before falling back to rest in the cold ‘Slow Ice, Old Moon’. Getting Jon Hopkins and Leo Abrahams in to assist seems to have fired Eno creatively too, for structurally this album is a finely proportioned piece of work, subsiding into dreamy reveries at the end as it recovers from the earlier bombast. ‘Small Craft On A Milk Sea’ needs several listens to completely deliver its magic, preferably on a widescreen sound system or on headphones in a quiet room, but make no mistake – this is one of the electronic albums of 2010 that absolutely demands to be heard, proving Eno still to be well ahead of his contemporaries.
5 Out Of 5
Reviewed By: Ben Hogwood