Track Listing

1. Burning Airlines Give You So Much More
2. Back In Judy's Jungle
3. Fat Lady Of Limbourg
4. Mother Whale Eyeless
5. Great Pretender
6. Third Uncle
7. Put A Straw Under Baby
8. True Wheel
9. China My China
10. Taking Tiger Mountain

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #79453 in Music
• Released on: 2004-05-31
• Number of discs: 1
• Format: Original recording remastered
• Dimensions: .20 pounds

CD Description
TAKING TIGER MOUNTAIN (BY STRATEGY), Brian Eno's sophomore solo outing, is a grab bag of freaky, science-fiction-dippedconfections. Filled with a battery of innovative, unsettling effects, the album is darker and more complex than HERE COME THE WARM JETS. The artist shows an increasing willingnessto experiment with texture, as on "The Great Pretender", whose whirling, oozing keyboard line and synthesized vocals approximate delirium tremens or a hatching hive of maggots, oron "Put A Straw Under Baby", which features the Portsmouth Sinfonia, whose members have no knowledge of their instruments.
Yet Eno's grasp of melody and songcraft is everywhere: on the bouncing, absurdist/philosophical "Burning Airlines(Give You So Much More)", and on straight-out rockers, likethe deliciously intense "Third Uncle" (which is propelled by the churning guitar of Roxy Music's Phil Manzenera, and is, arguably, the album's highlight). Concurrent with David Bowie's ALADDIN SANE-era alien aesthetic, Eno's tunes are evenmore otherwordly and warped than his glam cohort, making use of the full palette of bizarro synthesizer effects and creepy-cheeky postures. The songs, however, are as inventive and appealing as their treatments, and make for Eno's most solid--and experimental--pop album. TAKING TIGER MOUNTAIN holdsup magnificently, even years on in the artist's brilliant career.

Customer Reviews

The Pinnacle of Eno's Work
It is hard for me to review Tiger Mountain without resorting to the most fawning, gushing language of which fandom is capable. I will attempt here to be a bit restrained and objective, but the plain fact is that if some supremely evil dictator decreed tomorrow that no citizen could own more than a single CD, I would choose this one as my lifelong companion: It has beauty, excitement, charm, sensuality, intelligence, and -- oh yes, by the way -- mystery.

Tiger Mountain is Eno's magnum opus. Though Another Green World is probably his stylistic apex, that work lacks Tiger's emotional highs and overall resonance and energy. Though his first solo album redefined what popular music could be, this one puts the polish on that initial redefinition.

From the apoplectic onset of Burning Airlines, one is seduced into a blurry Wonderland of connotation and denotation, meaning and nonsense, wakefulness, dreams and nightmares, where one becomes complicit in one's own confusion until the slow polar sweep of the title track fades out.....Eno's mastery of sonic texture is never more apparent; his alchemical blending of timbres both traditional and novel never more glittering. Having once heard the counterpoint of Robert Wyatt's innocent falsetto and Portsmouth Sinfonia's sweetly off-key cadences, is it possible either to forget Put A Straw Under Baby or to imagine the song scored in any other fashion?

The redolence and wit of the lyrics as well is unsurpassed, invoking a broad nexus of meanings without enforcing any one in particular. Despite their restive refusal to be pinned down, the words are often startlingly memorable. For instance, it is delightful if profitless to speculate upon what piety may be contained in: "There's a brain in the table/There's a heart in the chair/And they all live in Jesus/It's a family affair."

Released in 1974, Tiger Mountain has aged well. Twenty-five plus years later, this creative and influential rock endeavor does not show any signs of staleness. On repeated listenings, new surprises continue to well up from its depths. What more could one ask of any long-term relationship?

Excellent second album from Eno at his quirky best
This is almost an Eno/Manzanera album, such is Phil Manzanera's significant contribution as arranger, co-producer and performer throughout. Manzanera is a highly under-valued guitarist and was the first with which Eno experimented, using treatments to manipulate his basic guitar sound. As a second album this is much more consistent sounding with more of a band feel than "Here Come the Warm Jets". Lyrically it is just as oblique and fanciful with vividly weird tales of men inside whales without raincoats and black eggs melting into candles.

The blueprint to his work with Talking Heads is on this album. Listen to the jagged guitars, pumping bass and hissing electronic percussion on this and then compare to "More Songs about Buildings and Food". Taking Tiger Mountain like the majority of Eno's output is years ahead of it's time. Being a non-musician he had no regard or pre-conceptions about what and what could not be sonically done. He just did it!

A classic piece of new wave thrashing is "Third Uncle", with Manzanera never sounding so manic. I prefer the version on "801 Live" but there is no denying the intensity and originality on display. The centrepiece of the album is "The True Wheel" with it's wonderfully infectious squelchy electronic backing, fuelled by Manzanera's riffing guitar. The female chorus sing about being the 801 with Eno looking for a certain ratio. Amazing stuff. "China My China IS prototype Talking Heads, with Manzanera showing the way for David Byrne. There is a hint of Eno's impending ambient ambitions on the title track, with its gorgeous Harold Budd-like piano motif.

So, another original, individual album made even more remarkable set against the times in which it was made.

A couple of comments about these re-issues. They are minimally packaged in digipaks which are housed in transparent plastic slip cases. These are not remasters as such, but new transfers taken from the original master tapes using the new Direct Stream Digital (DSD) format. This is state of the art as regards mastering onto compact disc. They have been transferred by Simon Heyworth who is one of the best in the business. He has made statements about the remastering of these recordings. Why change something that was done right originally! Eno was happy with the original mastering so what is needed is just the best transfer onto compact disc that is currently feasible. Whereas the original CD's sounded flat and thin, these transfers are much livelier and offer a fuller, more detailed sound.

a classic
A musician friend played me this album just after it was released. I was a staunch Roxy Music fan and I admit I resisted the charms during my first listening but something got planted in my soul that took root and grew soon after. I went out and bought my own copy and I went on a personal crusade to win my other friends over. For me Taking Tiger Mountain, Another Green World and Here Come the Warm Jets are equally fantastic. Each contain huge doses of pathos, depth and humor. On these 3 albums we find absolute gems, showing a talent for songwriting that Eno never again (much to my disappointment!) allowed to see the light of day. His ventures into ambient music are of course important works but you won't find anything there to move you. His colaborations with Bowie and his fine production work raised the standards of popular music through the 80s and his influence is still very apparent in many indie bands of today.
I lost my vinyl copy of Taking Tiger Mountain many years ago but just seeing the picture of the cover and reading the songlist starts the music playing in my head once again. I'm going to order the CD right now!