The Shutov Assembly


The Shutov Assembly is the thirteenth solo studio album by British musician Brian Eno, released on 10 November 1992 on Warner. One of Eno's ambient albums, it was reissued in 2014 with a second disc with bonus tracks.

Overview

The album is dedicated to Russian artist Sergei Shutov, and was created as an assembly of tracks for him, as he had mentioned to Eno the difficulty he had of getting Eno's music in the then-communist Russia.
On the rear cover of the CD, the ten tracks of nine letters are arranged in a grid as seen in a word search puzzle.
The album's Rykodisc entry describes it as "a journey through Eno's sumptuous audio-visual installations from around the world, each track touching down on a particular event and atmosphere."

Track listing

  1. "Triennale" – 4:02
  2. "Alhondiga" – 3:16
  3. "Markgraph" – 3:39
  4. "Lanzarote" – 8:37
  5. "Francisco" – 4:44
  6. "Riverside" – 3:50
  7. "Innocenti" – 4:19
  8. "Stedelijk" – 5:26
  9. "Ikebukuro" – 16:05
  10. "Cavallino" – 3:06
; 2014 reissue's bonus disc
  1. "Eastern Cities" – 4:32
  2. "Empty Platform" – 4:29
  3. "Big Slow Arabs" – 4:39
  4. "Storm" – 6:29
  5. "Rendition" – 5:15
  6. "Prague" – 2:39
  7. "Alhondiga Variation" – 6:33

    The music

Talking to Mojo magazine in 1998, Eno explained that The Shutov Assembly tracks "were originally proposals for orchestral pieces; what I wanted to do was make them, using my normal tricks and devices, and then present them to an orchestra and ask them to try and copy them accurately – so if this sound goes "dnnngeeeee", you might need to have a damped tubular bell and a violin player working together to make that one sound. I thought it would be an interesting way to use an orchestra, to force it to use its instruments in a different way". The Netherlands Metropole Orkest played two performances of the music in June 1999 at the Holland Festival, which ran from 5 to 26 June in Amsterdam, the first of which was broadcast live on Dutch radio.
Though the music can certainly be classified amongst his other ambient works, most of the compositions have a certain "dark" feel to them. In an interview, Eno said "it's the association with danger that I didn't use to like, and it's exactly that, what I do like now".

Credits