Song of the day

"The Belldog", by Eno, Moebius and Roedelius. Somehow, many years ago, I must have come home from one of Russell's and my regular Expeditionary Forces to record shops far and wide with SKY021, also known as "After The Heat" by Eno, Roedelius and Moebius (1978). This would have been in the early to middle 1980s, when this type of music was still hard to obtain, and (sudden intake of breath) There Was No Internet. Nowadays, of course, Sky Records has a huge cachet (in certain small but intense circles), and the selling point for the album would no doubt be the presence of the members of Cluster, but back then the drawcard was Eno. I had no idea who the others were. To be honest, I don't remember listening to the album all that often, beyond the last three tracks (the ones with Eno on vocals). But I must have, because last night, as shirt-ironing music, I threw the heavy German vinyl disc on the turntable and was surprised at how well known were all of the music's many quiet twists and turns. I was even more surprised at how it positively reeks of Eno's influence, far beyond just his voice on those three tracks. Most of the album is very much of a piece with "Music For Films" (also 1978), although fragments of "Tzima N'Arki" would appear three years later on Eno and David Byrne's "My Life In The Bush Of Ghosts". "The Belldog" itself is a lovely song, which would, perhaps not surprisingly, slot nicely into the second side of "Before And After Science" (December 1977: can you believe Eno's work rate in those days?).