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Eno, Brian - Passengers – Full album
Identifier
021935
Type of Spiritual Experience
Background
One of Eno's better-known collaborations was with the members of U2, and several other artists in a group called Passengers - Bono, Adam Clayton, The Edge, Larry Mullen Jnr. and featuring extra passengers Luciano Pavarotti, Howie B, and Holi. They produced the 1995 album Original Soundtracks 1, which reached No. 76 on the US Billboard charts and No. 12 in the UK Albums Chart.
It is a collection of songs written for mostly imaginary films (the exceptions being songs for Ghost in the Shell, Miss Sarajevo, and Beyond the Clouds). In 1995, the US charts were dominated by movie soundtrack albums and singles, thus this was a sort of joke – a joke which few appear to have understood.
Even though films and in some cases complete descriptions of the plot are listed for each song, all but the three mentioned are bogus. The plot lines, however, do provide quite an interesting take on the images that inspired the music. They cover such things as the nature of time travel and also spirits on the subway! In fact, almost the entire album is about spiritual concepts, some of them quite profound. The plot lines aslo give both U2 and Eno a chance to bring in the themes of the horrors of war and the injustice of apartheid. In a sense, therefore, the videos are the theme of each song/track.
In those tracks that are not actual film related there is also the theme of how love, sex, lust, hate and related emotions govern human actions.
A description of the experience
Eno, Brian – Passengers – Full album
selected track descriptions
Your Blue room and Beyond the Clouds/Beach scene is about love and hate as well as the idea ‘can the same heart love both God and man?’ Other themes including the need to sublimate desire to love, and death. The track features U2's bass player Adam Clayton reciting the final verse on your Blue Room, and is the only album recording featuring Clayton as vocalist.
"Miss Sarajevo" - is the only single from the album. Luciano Pavarotti makes a guest vocal appearance, singing the opera solo. It also appears on U2's compilation, The Best of 1990-2000, and was covered by George Michael on his album, Songs from the Last Century. It reached No. 6 on the UK Singles Chart and was a top-ten hit in many other European countries. Bono, the band's lead vocalist, cites "Miss Sarajevo" as his favourite U2 song. The Sarajevo track accompanies the camera as it follows the organisers of a rather bizarre beauty contest in war torn Sarajevo, through the tunnels and cellars of the city, “giving a unique insight into life during modern war, where civilians are the targets. The film captures the dark humour of the besieged Sarajevans, their stubborn refusal to be demoralised and suggests that surrealism and dadaism are the appropriate responses to fanaticism”
Ito Okashi [featuring Holi]- There is at times an interweaving of fact and fiction – leading to the question, what is Reality? Rica [not Rita] Takashima (高嶋リカ Takashima Rica), for example, exists and is a prolific pop artist and manga artist who has had exhibitions and shows in museums and galleries in New York and as well as across Japan. According to the plot description her best known work is Ito Okashi based on Sei Shonagon’s list of beautiful things in the 10th century classic ‘The Pillow Book’. And indeed Sei Shōnagon (清少納言?, lesser councilor of state Sei), (c. 966–1017/1025) was a Japanese author, poet and a court lady who served the Empress Teishi (Sadako) around the year 1000 during the middle Heian period. And she was the author of The Pillow Book (枕草子 makura no sōshi?). The ‘installation’ includes a vast number of very significant symbolic objects – the child, the egg, birds, mice and the idea of dust to dust………
|
No. |
Title |
From film |
Length |
|
1. |
"United Colours" |
United Colours of Plutonium (Japan) |
5:31 |
|
2. |
"Slug" |
Slug (Germany) |
4:41 |
|
3. |
"Your Blue Room" |
Par-delà les nuages / Beyond the Clouds (Italy) |
5:28 |
|
4. |
"Always Forever Now" |
Always Forever Now (Hong Kong) |
6:24 |
|
5. |
"A Different Kind of Blue" |
An Ordinary Day (USA) |
2:02 |
|
6. |
"Beach Sequence" |
Par-delà les nuages / Beyond the Clouds (Italy) |
3:31 |
|
7. |
"Miss Sarajevo" (featuring Luciano Pavarotti) |
Miss Sarajevo (USA) |
5:40 |
|
8. |
"Ito Okashi" (featuring Holi) |
Ito Okashi / Something Beautiful (Japan) |
3:25 |
|
9. |
"One Minute Warning" |
Ghost in the Shell (Japan) |
4:40 |
|
10. |
"Corpse (These Chains Are Way Too Long)" |
Gibigiane / Reflections (Italy) |
3:35 |
|
11. |
"Elvis Ate America" (featuring Howie B) |
Elvis Ate America (USA) |
3:00 |
|
12. |
"Plot 180" |
Hypnotize (Love Me 'til Dawn) (UK) |
3:41 |
|
13. |
"Theme from The Swan" |
The Swan (Hungary) |
3:24 |
|
14. |
"Theme from Let's Go Native" |
Let's Go Native (South Africa) |
3:08 |
|
Total length: |
58:10 |
||
Elvis Ate America - The lyrics to this are quite amusing, here is a selection:
Elvis, white trash
Elvis the Memphis flash
Elvis didn't smoke hash
Woulda been a sissy without Johnny Cash
Elvis didn't dodge the draft
Elvis had his own aircraft
Elvis having a laugh
On Lisa Marie in a colour photograph
Elvis under the hood
Elvis with Cadillac blood
Elvis, darling bud
Flowered and returned to the Mississippi mud