I decided to choose a short track from one of my favourite albums, Brian Eno’s 1977 album Before and After Science.
“Energy Fools The Magician” is a wonderful track and I feel it’s always been a bit overshadowed by the other material for one reason or another. It’s a track that posseses a loose, moody (ambient?) jazz feel, similar to Miles Davis’ Get Up On It (1974) - especially the epic, “He Loved Him Madly” where I can hear a strong correlation with Eno’s more sideways excursions from the 70s, such as “Energy Fools The Magician”, Music For Films (1976) as well as “Over Fire Island” from the previous album, Another Green World (1975). I remember reading that Eno was obsessed with this particular Davis album. On these Eno tracks - much like “He Loved Him Madly” - bass and percussion provide an elastic, asynchorous bed for everything else (keys, synths, organ) to float around.
With this is mind, I thought I would add what I felt wasn’t there on “Energy Fools The Magician”: namely guitar, warbling synth and something a bit arhythmic to compliment the skittery, haptic feel of the original track’s fretbass and spacious drumming.
When I pulled the original track out of the mix, I was pretty satisfied with the result. I stuck to a one-take rule for each of the overdubs, so as to not overthink the process and respond instinctively to the melodic, harmonic and gestural aspects of the original track, as well as my succesive additions.