Taking Tiger Mountain

By Strategy

Brian Eno Taking Tiger Mountain By Strategy

Brian Eno Taking Tiger Mountain By Strategy

The story goes that Eno was struck by the title of a contemporary Maoist opera back in 1975...and pinched it (the world was a different place, then!) as a vague concept around which he could build his second album. Here's the original, I believe, "a modern revolutionary Peking opera."

Shanghai Jing Ju Tuan: Taking Tiger Mountain By Strategy

If you're old enough to remember that time, China was closed to international eyes, so the very concept that Eno, glam-rocker and intellectual poser, would swap from his frequently near-stand-up style of lyrics (see: Here Come the Warm Jets)to present a weird, vague discourse on China was...well, preposterous. In fact, as teenagers, we already had an adjective for it. Such activity was...eno-esque!

Essentially, what you get with Taking Tiger Mountain By Strategy is a moody, mysterious pop-album that's kind-of thematically Chinese, with lyrics that allude occasionally (and with no menace) to:

espionage
nationalism &
political struggle

...but just as often, don't. Hmmm.

In fact, because of Eno's droll vocalising and co-writer Phil Manzanera bringing a certain homogeneity to the music (Tiger Mountain is considerably less diverse than Warm Jets) one's driven away from the lyrics' meaning and pushed more into the sounds...and they are very cool sounds, created with the help of:

Roxy Music's Andy Mackay &
Soft Machine's Robert Wyatt

You can hear that Eno really starts to use his synthesizers texturally on Tiger Mountain and Manzanera's guitars are, of course, impeccable. By and large, the tunes, though mostly unspectacular...are also very memorable:

the almost oompah-band feel of Back In Judy's Jungle
the genuine menace of The Fat Lady Of Limbourg & The Great Pretender
the perfect pop of The True Wheel
the rhythmic frenzy of Third Uncle &, of course
the quiet title track, Taking Tiger Mountain, a fore-runner of much of Eno's subsequent career

I'm quite a fan of Taking Tiger Mountain...but unfortunately, if you take the time to listen to the sound snippets on Amazon...they don't really convey the effect of the album...and I can't really explain why. The album's really considerably better than that.

Brian Eno: Taking Tiger Mountain By Strategy

"...Taking Tiger Mountain has all the trappings of glam rock thrown into a blender full of prog rock. The results gets your attention with its glitter surface but stays with you long after the musical meal is finished..." Amazon reviewer Wayne Klein

"...Eno's music and lyrics here are strange and quirky in a wonderful way that people used to attribute to "wit." At turns comical, macabre, sarcastic, and flippant, this album is a very difficult to describe. It certainly doesn't sound like anything else produced in the 1970s (or since)..." Amazon reviewer S. Macdonald

"...This album sounds like nothing that I have heard so far in my life and the closest that I can even compare it with is Smile (Brian Wilson)..." Amazon reviewer Bjorn Viberg

While it might seem something of a pointless release, Doug Hislinger & Caroleen Beatty (apperently both members of obscure San Francisco band, Waycross) have created a virtual replica of Taking Tiger Mountain By Strategy, released in 2004, almost thirty years after the original.

Why?

Well, I'm not really sure, but like Todd Rundgren's Side 1 of Faithful, it's obviously a work of great respect.

Doug Hislinger & Caroleen Beatty: Taking Tiger Mountain By Strategy

Me?

Well, I'm going Zen and merely saying, cryptically, that Eno spelt backwords is "One".

Huh?