Roger Eno – Without Wind/Without Air (Deutsche Grammophon) –  Roger Eno’s third album for the rather prestigious Deutsche Grammophon label, Without Wind/Without Air is a beautifully quiet album that includes both deliciously crafted solo piano pieces and pieces orchestrated for various combinations of clarinet, guitar, bass, strings, synths, percussion and subtle electronics. it It is mostly an instrumental collection of pieces, there are guest vocal appearances from soprano Grace Davidson and Roger’s daughters Cecily Eno and Lotti Eno, with Roger himself rather warmly singing on The Moon And The Sea. Jonathan Stockhammer conducts the Scoring Berlin strings on three tracks, while Eno’s friend and producer Christian Badzura arranged and plays on several tracks as well as having co-written the opening and closing numbers.

Forgiveness and After Rain. Without Wind / Without Air is a graceful album, a full bodied album, a very easy on the ear collection of pieces. Easy doesn’t mean it comes without challenge, that it is without depth, you might say it is the opposite of radical, and it is rather hard to pull that off, you might say it is simple but then that’s surely the cleverness of it all. These pieces, this album is something full of emotion, rewardingly so (although I could probably do without the convention of a rather almost middle-of-the-road politely obvious song called There Was A Ship within the body of it all). Mostly this is the rather beautiful, rather calm classical (serious) stillness suggest by the album’s title. A rather beautiful album to spend quality time with. 

More via Deutsche Grammophon / www.rogereno.com