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Spinner (album)

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Spinner
Studio album by
Brian Eno and Jah Wobble
Released1995
Recorded1994 & 1995
StudioTransfermation, London[1]
GenreAmbient, instrumental rock
Length51:00
LabelAll Saints Records
ProducerJah Wobble, Brian Eno (initial tracks)
Brian Eno and Jah Wobble chronology
Neroli
(1993) 		Spinner
(1995) 		Original Soundtracks 1
(1995)
Professional ratings
Review scores
SourceRating
AllMusic[2]
Entertainment WeeklyA−[3]
Down Beat[4]
Pitchfork7.7/10[5]
Rolling Stone[6]
Trouser Pressfavourable[7]

Spinner is an instrumental album by British musicians Brian Eno and Jah Wobble (a.k.a. John Wardle), released in 1995.

Track listing

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All initial compositions by Brian Eno; tracks 2, 3, 5, 6, 9 and 10 with additional credit to Jah Wobble.

  1. "Where We Lived" – 2:59
  2. "Like Organza" – 2:44
  3. "Steam" – 3:16
  4. "Garden Recalled" – 3:21
  5. "Marine Radio" – 5:04
  6. "Unusual Balance" – 5:23
  7. "Space Diary 1" – 1:51
  8. "Spinner" – 2:54
  9. "Transmitter and Trumpet" – 8:41
  10. "Left Where It Fell" – 7:02
  11. (Hidden track later released on The Drop as "Iced World") – 8:42

Overview

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The music on Spinner has its origins in the Eno-penned soundtrack to the Derek Jarman biographical 60-minute movie Glitterbug, which was released in 1994, shortly after Jarman's death.[8]

The movie was an abstract montage composed of Super-8 excerpts from his personal video-diaries, going behind-the-scenes of many of his movies from the late sixties right up to the end of the eighties.[9]

Eno composed most of the soundtrack in his Kilburn studio, working directly onto digital stereo. The music stayed in the film; it was never released as a separate entity. Eno explains "I had intended to collect the music as a soundtrack record, but in the end a lot of it didn't make much sense without the film".[8]

In 1995, Eno handed the master-tapes to Wobble. "He received from me a number of stereo tapes and did what he does – spanning the gamut from leaving them completely alone (such as "Garden Recalled"); playing along (such as "Like Organza"); or using them as atmospheres for entirely new compositions (such as "Steam")".[8]

Eno did not participate in any co-production on Spinner at all; it was all done by Wobble. Eno said "I didn't even hear it all till it was finished. I had no input at all on that stage of it. Everything that he put on, he produced. Anything you hear looming around in the back is probably what I produced".[10]

Some of Eno's thoughts on the album in its final stages can be found in the last section ("Wobbly letter") of the appendix of Eno's published diary, A Year with Swollen Appendices. This section is a copy of a letter from Eno to Dominic Norman-Taylor of All Saints Records, describing Eno's opinions of Jah Wobble's mixes and treatments of the tracks. Several of the tracks are given their working titles ("Unusual Balance", for example, is referred to as "Scrapy"). The letter gives hints as to the methods used by Eno and Wobble in creating the album, with Eno providing many of the original tracks, which Wobble then treated and sequenced.[11]

The finished product is a fusion of ambient, instrumental rock, and dub. Eno referred to the last track as an example of what he called "Unwelcome Jazz. Because for the last 3 or 4 years, really, I've been writing these pieces of music, which sound like some peculiar take on jazz. They don't really sound like jazz, they obviously have some kind of influence from jazz. But most of the people I played them to don't really like them – so I call it 'Unwelcome Jazz' [laughs]".[12]

Personnel

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Credits taken from album booklet.

  • Brian Eno - synthesizer, treatments
  • Jah Wobble - bass (on all tracks except 1, 4, 7), drums (tracks 3, 6, 10), keyboards (5, 9, 10), atmospheres (8, 9)
  • Mark Ferda - atmospheres (3, 8-10), keyboards (3), percussion (10)
  • Justin Adams - guitar (3, 6, 9)
  • Richard Bailey - drums (5)
  • Jaki Liebezeit - drums (8, 9)
  • Sussan Deihim - vocals (6)
Production
  • Brian Eno - initial soundtrack recording and production
  • Jah Wobble and Mark Ferda - additional recording and mixing, final production
  • Mark Ferda - mixing, assistant recording and production
  • Brian Eno and David Coppenhall - cover art

Versions

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Country Label Cat. no. Media Release date
UK All Saints ASCD23 CD/LP 1995,1999,2003
US Gyroscope 8190 6614-2 CD 1995
? All Saints 571495 CD 2006
? Hannibal 1495 CD 2006

Anthologies

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  • Sonora Portraits 1, a compilation CD accompanying a book of essays and interviews edited by Claudio Chianura & Giampiero Bigazzi, features the track "Left Where It Fell", as well as a few selections from Glitterbug (Materiali Sonori, MASO CD 90110, 1999).[13]
  • The tracks "Spinner" and "Left Where It Fell" appear on Jah Wobble's 2004 anthology I Could Have Been a Contender.[14]

References

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  1. ^ "Transfermation". Discogs.com. Retrieved 2 January 2022.
  2. ^ "Spinner - Brian Eno, Jah Wobble | Songs, Reviews, Credits". AllMusic. Retrieved 2 January 2022.
  3. ^ "Spinner Review". Entertainment Weekly. Archived from the original on 21 April 2014. Retrieved 20 April 2014.
  4. ^ Down Beat (10/96, p.62) - 4 Stars - Very Good - "...Wobble indulges his taste for dub bass lines and Middle Eastern melodies while seamlessly incorporating Eno's work. Remarkably, the results never sound forced or inappropriate."
  5. ^ Cardew, Ben (21 August 2020). "Brian Eno / Jah Wobble: Spinner Album Review". Pitchfork.
  6. ^ Derogatis, Jim (14 December 1995). "Spinner". Rolllingstone.com. Retrieved 2 January 2022.
  7. ^ Grant, Steven; Green, Jim; Robbins, Ira. "TrouserPress.com :: Brian Eno". TrouserPress.com. Retrieved 4 July 2016.
  8. ^ a b c Brian Eno in his liner notes to Spinner. Online, transcribed and as jpg, on Spinner at Discogs (list of releases)
  9. ^ "EnoWeb: The Latest Brian Eno News and Information". Music.hyperreal.org. Retrieved 2 January 2022.
  10. ^ Brian Eno in an interview with Paul Schütze for The Wire, Issue 139, September 1995, online: "Strategies for making sense". Music.hyperreal.org. Retrieved 21 March 2022.
  11. ^ Eno, B. (1996) A Year with Swollen Appendices. London: Faber and Faber. pp 412–414. ISBN 0-571-17995-9.
  12. ^ Brian Eno in an interview with Michael Engelbrecht on March 24th 1996 for Jazzthetik, November/December 1996, online: "Ideas of infinity and falling apart". Music.hyperreal.org. Retrieved 21 March 2022.
  13. ^ "Brian Eno : Sonora Portraits - Listen, Review and Buy at ARTISTdirect". Archived from the original on 4 September 2007. Retrieved 8 March 2007.
  14. ^ "Jah Wobble – I Could Have Been A Contender (Anthology) (2004, CD)". Discogs.com. Retrieved 2 January 2022.
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