- It must be tough to have a career in the shadow of a brother, especially when your brother is Brian Eno. Roger Eno's first recorded work was alongside Brian on 1983's Apollo: Atmospheres And Soundtracks. Since then he's been responsible for dozens of solo albums and film scores. Although generally referred to as an ambient musician, his solo work sits distinctly apart from his collaborations with his older brother.
The bulk of Little Things Left Behind, a collection of Roger Eno's work from 1988 to 1998, consists of delicate piano miniatures that immediately bring to mind Yann Tiersen or Michael Nyman. The three composers all favor a song structure that's thoroughly investigated on the first disc of Little Things, where arpeggiated melodies are explored to the point that they become both strange and hypnotic, like when you repeat a word so many times it loses its meaning.
On the earlier material, the compositions are relatively unadorned—the seven tracks from 1988's Between Tides are entirely piano-driven. Songs from The Familiar, meanwhile, are comparatively ornate, written in collaboration with Kate St. John and making use of a small chamber orchestra. The atmosphere here evokes the English pastoral, with birdlike melodies and Vaughan Williams-esque string swoops. Occasionally the mood shifts, as on "The Familiar," which has a louche, Moulin Rouge swagger.
The rest of the first disc draws from the 1994 LP Lost In Translation. Here Eno is much more self-assured: where The Familiar felt slight, these compositions have weight. On "Slow And Slender," he experiments for the first time with discordance, briefly but with interesting results.
Disco two starts with songs from Swimming, in which Eno experiments with his own voice, mostly turning in unconvincing Nick Drake-isms. The best work of the collection comes at the end, and is taken from 1998's The Flatlands. These pensive, string-heavy arrangements are effortlessly beautiful, especially "Somewhere Above," which combines thickly layered harmonies and buzzsaw string bass. It's in this section that Eno really finds his feet, coming good in the final quarter of an otherwise patchy set.
TracklistCD1
01. Between Tides
02. Field Of Gold
03. One Gull
04. The Silent Hours
05. When The City Sleeps
06. The Frost
07. Winter Music
08. The Wonderful Years
09. Mister Bosco
10. The Familiar
11. Days Of Decay
12. Heartland
13. Lament
14. The Last Resort
15. Slow & Slender
16. Newton's Statue
17. The Wispering Gallery
18. The Hunch
19. Emberdays
20. Rain Stopped Play
CD2
01. Evening Paragraphs
02. Docet Umbra
03. The Whole Wide World
04. The Slow River
05. In Water
06. Amukidi
07. Little Things Left Behind
08. Aryis
09. How You Shone The Parting Glass
10. Somewhere Above
11. Palimpsest
12. Walsingham
13. Turning
14. Mr Johnson Watches The Sky
15. The Third Light
16. Elevation
17. The Black Cat
18. The Flatlands
19. Days Like This