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We had the pleasure of interviewing Roger Eno over Zoom video!

Following on from the critically acclaimed DG solo debut, The Turning Year (2022) and follow up tracks such as \u201cAbove and Below\u201d, which has streamed over 19 million times, the new album, the skies, they shift like chords, features the previously released tracks, \u201cStrangely, I Dreamt\u201d, with vocals by Cecily Eno, \u201cTidescape\u201d, \u201cChordal Drift\u201d, and \u201cArms Open Wide\u201d.

the skies, they shift like chords builds on the soundworld of piano and strings heard on Roger Eno\u2019s DG debut solo album, The Turning Year, expanding it with lines for electric guitar, clarinet, bass clarinet, vibraphone, flute organ and subtle electronic sounds. Most of the tracks grew out of improvisations \u2013 musical snapshots. \u201cOften, the best way to cement these is by hardly using any detail,\u201d explains the composer and multi-instrumentalist. \u201cThe first track on the skies, \u2018Chordal Drift\u2019, is a series of quite thick string chords with no intimation of melody. If you listen to it more closely, though, you\u2019ll start to link things together.\u201d

The lone vocal piece on the album, \u201cStrangely, I Dreamt\u201d, is co-written and sung by Roger Eno\u2019s eldest daughter, vocalist and visual artist Cecily Eno. Its lyrics began life as part of a poem by one of her father\u2019s friends, but Cecily adapted them to include \u201cThe skies, they shift like chords\u201d, a line that invites us to contemplate the nature of impermanence.

That same idea lies behind \u201cTidescape\u201d. \u201cIt owes its name to a poem by Mary Markwell written in 1976,\u201d notes Roger Eno. \u201cI happened upon it in a Suffolk Poetry Society anthology, one of my favourite poetry collections. I loved the name, implying, as it does, how the tide creates a changing landscape unique to that environment.\u201d

As \u201cTidescape\u201d began taking shape for the album, Eno invited his guitarist friend, Jon Goddard to fashion a high guitar drone above the existing music for flute organ. \u201cJon\u2019s additions allowed me to hear two other elements in the piece, my beloved clarinet and bass clarinet, which sound like aural velvet. The resulting openness perhaps prompted my producer at DG, Christian Badzura, to have the courageous idea of adding reversed distorted guitar. I thoroughly enjoyed watching how the piece developed as though on its own, like a river finding its own path to the sea.\u201d

By contrast, \u201cArms Open Wide\u201d returns to the simplicity of Roger Eno\u2019s solo piano, although despite the track\u2019s gentle, intimate feel, it is underpinned by a sense of strength. \u201cThere always has to be something strong or utterly beautiful, otherwise there\u2019s the danger that it becomes like lift music\u2026\u201d

The album\u2019s other expressive titles include \u201cJapanese Rain Garden\u201d, \u201cThat Which Is Hidden\u201d, \u201cMind the Gap\u201d, \u201cIllusion\u201d, \u201cAbove And Below (Crepuscular)\u201d and \u201cThrough The Blue (Crepuscular)\u201d. \u201cI always name pieces after I\u2019ve composed them,\u201d says Roger Eno. \u201cI try to match them to poetic titles, to trigger feelings, emotions and thoughts as the music plays.\u201d

One of the emotional threads running throughout the skies, they shift like chords is Eno\u2019s relationship with his native region of East Anglia. The tracks are inspired by its landscape \u2013 a mix of small market towns, medieval churches, wheatfields, meadows, rivers and open skies \u2013 as well as by the work of local poets and the Norwich School of artists, active in the early 1800s. The album\u2019s melancholy tone has much to do with the threat now posed to the region\u2019s biodiversity by intensive farming and climate change.

\u201cThe overall mood is one of transience,\u201d says Eno of his new recording, whose moments of stillness are vital, allowing the music to breathe and listeners to explore their own emotional and imaginative response to it. \u201cThere are lots of gaps, silent pauses, throughout the album, which are a really important part of it. When a track finishes, you\u2019re still \u2018there\u2019 in the music, and unless the next one comes in at just the right moment, something\u2019s going to jangle with either or both of them. The composing part is only one part of the process \u2013 these other, constructive details are very important.

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