The Shutov Assembly

Born in 1955, Sergei Shutov was an artist who used painting, drawing, sculpture, photography, and A/V installations to react to and comment on the restrictive cultural atmosphere of his native Russia. Shutov corresponded with Brian Eno and told him that it was hard to purchase Eno recordings under the Communist regime. Eno’s solution was to personally compile this album as a gift for his friend. *The Shutov Assembly* consists of unreleased tracks that Eno had contributed to various sound installations and art festivals over the course of the \'80s. The album falls into the tradition of Eno’s “Ambient Works” series, though this music is far more ominous than the recordings he\'d made in the late \'70s and early \'80s. Where there was a kind of sweetness—even humor—in *Apollo: Atmospheres* and *Soundtrack*, these tracks feel like the accompaniment to potentially more hostile environments. Not that that makes them any less hypnotizing. No matter which song you choose as your entry point, this is music that will slowly suck you into an altered state, soothing even as it unnerves.

Brian Eno had a busy decade in the 1990s, including working on U2's Achtung Baby and Zooropa and David Bowie's Outside, scoring Neil Gaiman's TV series Neverwhere, and recording the Windows 95 startup tone. He also released four solo albums that have now been reissued in expanded editions, with an extra CD appended to each.

If The Shutov Assembly is reminiscent of Brian Eno's earlier "ambient" music projects dating back to Discreet Music (1975), it shouldn't be surprising.