You’ve really got to hand it to Brian Eno, who, now entering his fifth decade as a recording artist, had managed to create a genuine air of excitement in the lead up to his newest album, Small Craft on a Milk Sea. This is partially due to the fact that Small Craft represents a sort of spiritual convergence for experimental electronic music, as this is the first album Eno has released through Warp Records, a label which may very well have never existed if not for Eno and his initial run of course-charting ambient and electronic productions from the decade proceeding from the mid-70s. It’s also to Eno’s credit that the results clearly showcase a reinvigorated and well-considered recording mindset. On the other hand, it’s equally unfortunate that the record at a fundamental level evidences an approach which Eno arguably perfected sometime circa 1978. There’s certainly something to be said for familiarity, particularly for an artist who at this point could evidently subside on Coldplay and U2 production residuals alone, but it ultimately hangs Small Craft in a bit of limbo: while obviously competent and enjoyable to a fault, there’s little to differentiate the record as anything more than wheelhouse 2010 product when it could just as easily have been a pace-keeping early 90s document from an artist whose descendants have clearly built upon the ideas and techniques Eno helped popularize.
