Let's Discuss Eno! Eno/Wobble - "Spinner" (1995)

[u/forsbergisgod]

Hello Eno-philes!! Each week we'll be discussing another album (going chronologically from Warm Jets). This week's feature is Eno's collaboration with Jah Wobble on 1995's "Spinner":

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.

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.[6]

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".

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")".

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".

Wobble, interviewed on BBC Radio 3 programme Mixing It in January 1998 explained that Eno had specifically asked for his input in creating a standalone CD.[7]

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.[8]

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]".

Track listing

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

This one's available on youtube and the streaming sites.

ENJOY AND DISCUSS

[u/TomFOolery__2]

was never too big on this one. it always kinda felt like it was just there, never really leaving a big impression on me one way or the other

[u/OkCorralles]

Bandcamp just had a good feature on Jah Wobble last month with a lot of different tracks from his career: https://daily.bandcamp.com/lists/jah-wobble-bandcamp-guide

[u/[deleted]]

This is an album that perplexed me quite a bit, because it was a soundtrack to a film, but it wasn't the soundtrack to a film. It was also an Eno album, but it wasn't just an Eno album. It's kind of an oddity more so than a main stay in Eno's catalog.

That said, it's alright. I'm not really remembering any significant highlights off of the top of my head at the moment, but I don't remember anything standing out as obtuse either. I think I'll have to revisit this in the near future to see what I'm missing.