Taking Tiger Mountain By a Poll - Eno

IMPOSSIBLE

"Mother Whale Eyeless" has a great chorus, but I'll go with Manzanera madness on "Third Uncle," followed by the title track.

I was about to vote for "Cyndi Calls Me", but then realized it was the wrong album.

This album is great too, just that I need to listen to it more to decide which one is my fave track.

if u think "cyndi tells me" is the best in "warm jets" you will love "tiger mountain" more - cause it's a little poppier and lighter,like "cyndi" is.

"Burning Airlines Give You Much More". I'm a sucker for that doo-wop thing Eno does.

I vote Mother Whale Eyeless for the gorilla drumming and everything else. Like this album.

XXP: In fact I do like "Tiger Mountain" better, I guess it's more a matter of "Cyndi Calls Me" stickout out more to me for that particular exact reason.

Mother Whale Eyeless!
I LOVE this album and haven't listened to it for ages.

Well this is the best album ever, so I don't know how I'm gonna choose. NO wait, of course I know. The correct answer is THE TRUE WHEEL.

we saw the lovers, the modern lovers....

Third Uncle

Dan, you have answered correctly. "The True Wheel" is Eno's finest TTM moment. Particularly big shout-out for Manzanera's classic one-note guitar solo...

Tough one. "Burning Airlines," though "Back in Judy's Jungle" gives me goofy lolz and almost gets the vote.

"Back In Judy's Jungle", followed ever so closely by "Mother Whale Eyeless" (love it when Phil Collins enters in one channel towards the end with the whirlwind drumming) and "China My China" if the typewritter/guitar freakout middle wasn't so protracted.

It is almost impossible, but I went with "The True Wheel."

Classic all the way through. I'm picking "Fat Lady", though I doubt it will win. I love them barritone saxes.

"Third Uncle," but great great album all around.

title track

True Wheel

Third Uncle ...err... thirded.

i am heartened by all of the "mother whale eyeless" love here -- i thought that i was alone, that song usually is overlooked in favor of "third uncle," "fat lady of limbourg" or "the true wheel."

that said, i voted for "the true wheel."

i also heart "china my china" not just for the typewriter/guitar freak-out but also for the weird synth loops and guitar feedback at the end.

"Back in Judy's Jungle"

Love that kinda yawning guitar bit repeated along with crazy feedback bits on "China My China," not to mention how it opens out of radio static — the pseudo-mundanity breaks out into something transcendent by song's end. As a kid it got me all excited with this you've-left-earth feeling, and then the album let me gracefully down with the title track, thinking of which almost makes me want to cry somehow. Nostalgia for something that never happened, probably.

xxxpost

'the true wheel' is like the giddy high point of all this early eno stuff. the last two songs sound so exhausted compared to it!

Voted "True Wheel," though I've found myself listening to "The Great Pretender" a lot, and it was originally my least favorite. I hate not to vote for "Taking Tiger Mountain" - it sounds like an old man, reflecting back on the one great accomplishment of his life.

Yo, it's the title track all the way. The 5.5 most beautiful minutes in popular music!

For me, the "best tune" concept doesn't fit this album. If one song's an apple, another's an orange, knowwhatImean? I will say that "Mother Whale Eyeless" and "The True Wheel" are the only two I had to listen to again to remember how they go.

"Burning Airlines"

I remember China, My China, being my favorite, so that's what I'm gonna vote, but this reminds me to listen to the album again when I get home.

The True Wheel. Eno's best song.

the one that has the "...and this is the sound that they heard" followed by bizarro synth solo

That's "Back In Judy's Jungle". For a long time I had a hard time getting into this album, because I didn't like that song at all, and it's the second song on the album. I'm glad to read something about what's good about that song, because I just listened to it again and thought it was terrible, a real momentum killer after the first song. Luckily it picks up again with "The Fat Lady of Limbourg".

oh I like the whole vibe of it - the plucky British lads going off to a foreign land to be massacred, whistling all the while. Its like a psychedelic war movie.

still hard to argue that anything is better than the True Wheel on this one

right now I'm thinking "Great Pretender" or "Third Uncle," need to give this one a full relisten though. Awesome album.

True Wheel which has the greatest lyrics ever.

^^^ cosign

the true wheel easy

The True Wheel

I played air piano to it at a bar!

wow!

"China My China", 'cause you can sit at your computer keyboard and play along during the typewriter solo. But I can't overlook "Third Uncle" (Velvets add a 2nd drummer and go prog) or the engulfed-and-consumed-alive-by-aphids climax of "Great Pretender" or Phil Manzanera.

Automatic thread bump. This poll is closing tomorrow.

I was just listening to this album! This is really hard. So many good songs. But "Burning Airlines" it is.

I voted for Third Uncle, which I didn't even realise was a Brian Eno song til I heard this album - I have the Bauhaus cover but didn't know it was a cover.

"didn't even realise was a Brian Eno song til I heard this album "

ahead of it's time,like many other eno songs from that period.
nobody sounded like that in the early 70s.

Automatic thread bump. This poll's results are now in.

Wow, 67 votes is about twice what I expected.

sratisfying results at last.

Results like this make me question my typical deference for the ILM crowd.

I've always found it quite uplifting...

imago is a true man

i find not uplifting nor sad. just beautiful.

I find the effect more, well, affecting on the second side of "Before and After Science." "Spider & I" ...

x2

ending the album with that track is incredible. a stroke of incredibility.

mother whale eyeless is the underrated gem on this album though.

treesh i feel we have similar sincerities if unsimilar insincerities

I find the effect more, well, affecting on the second side of "Before and After Science." "Spider & I" ...

― Josh in Chicago,

this song slays me

<3 to you from america, imago. i'm sorry you're having a hard time.

cheers fella. it's getting better every day ^_^

let's see who can finish their book first k

spider & i was lovely but ttm (the song) is fucken cosmic. can't even begin

The title track is so great EXCEPT for when that guitar line does that annoying chromatic descending melody rather than the part where it blends magnificently into the piano melody.

no way

I've been enjoying the living hell out of Mother Whale Eyeless lately. I never gave it much of a chance because of all the other great songs on this album but it's so great. This whole album has pleasantly odd/never boring lyrics.

There's a pie shop in the sky

Ha I just listened to mother whale yesterday. It's my favorite on the record. When the boppy organ barges in my happiness is unstoppable.

Try listening to Mother Sky --> Mother Whale Eyeless. It's my new recipe for exuberance.

no i might break something

Back in Judy's Jungle and True Wheel for me

she clutches the tray
and then we talk just like a kitchen soufflé
nothing ventured, nothing gained

When my colleagues from Shenzhen were here last month we took them walking around Chelsea and when we went into the hipster artist flea market mother whale eyeless was playing

that's awesome. did it add to everyone's enjoyment of the flea market?

i have been listening to this album on repeat in my car for at least a week and i have a new appreciation for 'the great pretender' and also decided that 'third uncle' was so named because of its relationship to mother sky. it sounds kinda like robot mother sky on speed.

Is it kitchen soufflé or kitchen-sink play?

i have no idea -- that's why i posted it
it totally sounds like kitchen soufflé to me and i enjoy the lol wut eno-ness of it

I've never managed to catch half the words in that song and I've listened to it a billion times

i have listened to it a billion times too and only just now heard kitchen soufflé
i love how he uses the sound of words rather than their meaning and STILL manages to write songs that kinda make enough sense
it's a technique that is close to my <3

just relistened to this, I loove the part where it goes "and this is the sound that they heard..." on "Back in Judy's Jungle"

are there any other albums remotely like this one?

There are moments in the first 4 Kevin ayers that sound akin. Also search "A Stitch in Time" off one of Anthony Moore's solo records, very very tiger mtn

were I to vote now it would probably be for BIJJ

but there is not one track here that is anything other than excellent

argh who am I kidding, title track

idk

pulled this out tonight for the first time in years. i'm usually an AGW guy. i'd forgotten just how awesome this disc is. pretty sure i voted for the fat lady of limbourg in the poll. tonight, maybe mother whale eyeless or china my china.

Now we're on the telephone
Making final arrangements
ding ding

"Taking Tiger Mountain" – 5:33 3

this is sick and wrong!

I still listen to this all the time, but this thread revival has inspired me to listen to it again.

Everything getting a vote except "Put a Straw Under Baby" = OTM

mother whale eyeless still takes it for me. maybe the most roxy-sounding thing on here. nothing beats the switchup 2 minutes in ("In my town, there is a raincoat under a tree..."), which i've raved about elsewhere on ilx i think. one of eno's career best moments imo

it really blows my mind that this is from 1974 - same year as like Relayer, The Lamb Lies Down on Broadway, Rock Bottom, etc. etc...just sounds like it's from a totally different world

put a straw under baby is great and deserves at least a few votes

yes, if only for the Robert Wyatt backing vocals

So was it ever unveiled who Randi and The Pyramids are? (credited w/ (backing) vocals on 'The True Wheel' ["we are the 801!"]? I know he named her/the lot after a girl he was seeing back then and says he dreamt up the name, but who is the woman singing that?

Multitracked Polly Eltes?

Could be! We know she's on Mother Whale Eyeless, but I've never come across any source attributing the True Wheel vocal to her?

it really blows my mind that this is from 1974 - same year as like Relayer, The Lamb Lies Down on Broadway, Rock Bottom, etc. etc...just sounds like it's from a totally different world

― frogbs, Tuesday, November 1, 2016 11:41 AM (two years ago)

Spot on! Feel like this album is its own genre.

eno was a massive jerk for abandoning that genre tbrr

ooh look at me i invented ambient

otm

xp have you heard "Wrong Way Up"? also some stuff on "My Squelchy Life" is a bit similar, none of it is as bonkers and multilayered though

title track, bitches

was just thinking about this album yesterday because i was super feeling the lyrics to "mother whale eyeless"
his pop songs have more replay value for me than, say, the apollo soundtrack

Not heard xxp! Thanks...