Here Come the Warm Jets by Brian Eno - standing the test of time
Shortly after the release of Roxy Music's second album, For Your Pleasure, in 1973, Brian Eno left the band - a move that turned out to be beneficial for all concerned.
Brian Eno
Island
Eno was responsible for many of the edgier, more experimental aspects of early Roxy Music. Without him the band went on to their greatest commercial success, playing more mainstream rock.
Eno had some major hits in his future, as well, but pursued an altogether more idiosyncratic musical career which began with the release of Here Come the Warm Jets. All the members of Roxy Music - apart from Brian Ferry, with whom he had differences that led to Eno's departure - contributed to the album, as did guitarists Robert Fripp and Chris Spedding, among other musicians.
Phil Manzanera is credited as co-composer of Needles in the Camel's Eye and Cindy Tells Me; Eno and Fripp co-wrote Blank Frank; and Dead Finks Don't Talk is credited jointly to Paul Thompson, bassist Busta Jones, keyboardist Nick Judd and Eno, but it's clearly the title artist's show.
Eno's remarkable originality is primarily expressed not through his limited instrumental skills, but through advanced conceptual thinking and the skilled processing of sound. The processing equipment at his disposal in 1974 was primitive by modern standards, but Here Come the Warm Jets sounds like absolutely nothing else recorded in the early 1970s, and remains surprisingly undated.