Drums Between the Bells (Bonus Track Version)

Five decades on and the music of Brian Eno is still as challenging and unusual as ever. This collaboration with poet Rick Holland, who has worked with Eno since 2002, is another intricate exploration of words and music. Holland’s focus is science and environment, urban studies and metaphysical lights. Different vocalists are employed for the readings and Eno’s music-scapes travel far and wide. “Pour It Out” features a sweetness, a nostalgic retro sound that chimes like a pop song from the mid-‘60s, while “Glitch” is a tough, brooding piece of jump-cut rhythms, terrorizing keyboards and disembodied vocals. The nearly seven-minute “The Real” drifts in an ambient void that along with “Breath of Crows,” the other extended meditation, creates the heart of the record. The brief imagistic pieces, “As If Your Eyes Were Partly Closed As If You Honed The Swirl Within Them and Offered Me the World” (the title is nearly longer than the tune) and “Cloud 4” are reminiscent of Eno’s most soothing work. But the duo aren’t interested in making anyone comfortable as the spiked interplay of “Multimedia” and “Sounds Alien” make clear.