Taking Tiger Mountain by Strategy/Here Come the Warm Jets/Before and After Science/Another Green World (Virgin)

For about 20 years, this quartet of mid-1970s albums by a pre-ambient Eno has stood as my personal proof that vinyl can sound better than CD. While the LP of Before and After Science offered bass to curl the floorboards in a multilayered tapestry of expertly played and interwoven instruments, the CD sounded like someone had taken the master tapes into a recording booth, jammed up the treble and gone down the pub, taking Percy Jones’s sublime bass-playing with him.

Now, in a classic case of better late than never, all four albums can be heard as Eno intended. Classily repackaged in plain cardboard holders protected by plastic sleeves, they come with no extra tracks, no new liner notes and no fond retrospective by former band members who have fallen on hard times.

Time to crank up the volume, then, and enjoy these wide-ranging albums for what they are: four of the most idiosyncratic and influential works of the 1970s, foreshadowing punk rock on tracks such as King’s Lead Hat (on Science), Baby’s on Fire (Warm Jets), or Eno’s own later ambient work (Spirits Drifting, from Green World). As ever, part of the fun is to study the liner notes while listening.

Can that really be Phil Collins on drums? Robert Fripp on guitar? John Cale on viola? Phil Manzanera on guitar? Sure can.

Any person who does not have at least one of these four records in their collection cannot be trusted.

Nigel Kendall

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