Brian Eno & Karl Hyde - High Life (2014)

Within weeks of the release of their acclaimed debut album, television performances and augmented reality iOS app, we can reveal that the collaboration between Brian Eno and Karl Hyde continues with a second full-length record HIGH LIFE, which is released 30th June 2014 on Warp Records. The experiment drew inspiration from the repetitive minimalism of composers like Steve Reich and Phillip Glass, and from the polyrhythmic music of Fela Kuti and funk, as well as continuing the work that Eno and Hyde have done separately.

High Life, though, is a genuine surprise. As the second meeting between Eno and Hyde in the last four months, it would have been reasonable to expect outtakes, another set of OK half-songs to accompany the ones released earlier this year. But High Life—recorded in just five days, with much of it played and processed live—is something else altogether. This is Eno’s best vocal album in 25 years, since his 1990 collaboration with John Cale, Wrong Way Up. It’s interesting to go back that far because High Life has a few things in common with that record, most prominently the elements inspired by pop music from the African continent. Yes, this is a recurring obsession of Eno’s, dating back at least to his first co-billed collaboration with David Byrne, 1981’s My Life in the Bush of Ghosts. But on High Life it’s again made explicit, from the title (Highlife is a broad genre of jazz-inflected West African pop music that emerged late in the last century) on down.
That said, many of the references are less musical and more textural, and guitars are the first thing you notice. The opening “Return” is nine minutes of drone-guitar bliss, as Karl Hyde strums two chords furiously with the sort of pinched, trebly, delay-heavy tone that evokes both West African styles and the Edge circa The Unforgettable Fire. The tension of pivoting between those two chords without resolution is softened by Eno’s voice, which he layers into sturdy central melody softened by billowing harmonies. It’s the kind of blindingly simple thing that nobody does better than Eno, and it points to why this record towers over much of his recent output—it sounds analog, like people in a room playing who could make mistakes. Despite his technological pedigree, Eno has always been most inspired by the place where abstract mathematics meet the messiness of nature. His earlier collaborative efforts on Warp, as well as Small Craft on a Milk Sea, felt like records where meaning was carved from endless possibility; High Life shows how much more he can wring out of just a handful of ideas.
If I’m leaning heavily toward Eno’s contributions here, it’s because so many of his songwriting and production signatures are in the foreground. Hyde is the guitarist throughout the record, but Eno’s fingerprints are all over his approach. “DBF” is a relatively upbeat track with a chicken scratch-funk feel that makes me think of Talking Heads’ “Born Under Punches”, while the slow and dreamy line in “Time to Waste It” brings to mind an ’80s interpretation of King Sunny Ade. But we’re talking about something more than just a collection of global music signifiers here—influences are stripped down, transformed, and often turned into something disorienting and strange through Eno’s processing. “Time to Waste It” has pinched, warped, and ultimately very weird vocals of uncertain origin which seem to be singing lead from different songs with each new line. “Lilac”’s overlapping guitar lines have the frenetic pulse of classical minimalism, with odd bleeps and squawks mixing in with the chords, and they’re contrasted with the richly harmonized vocals, which remind us how in tune he is with the pure joy of singing.
That big-hearted spirit is embedded into the record as a whole. I count one dud among the six tracks, the just-OK “Moulded Life”, which has some nice sounds but feels a bit like processing-for-processing’s-sake. But that is more than redeemed by the elegiac closer “Cells & Bells”, where grinding Fennesz-like electronics are set against a mass of voices singing a dark but faintly hopeful prayer. It’s a moving end to a startling and inspiring record. Eno’s been involved with quite a few of those in the past, but it’s especially nice to experience a new one that reaches us in the present moment.

Tracklist:

01. Return (09.00)
02. DBF (04.14)
03. Time To Waste It (08.19)
04. Lilac (09.24)
05. Moulded Life (04.55)
06. Cells & Bells (07.41)