1LP Color Vinyl Edition of Brian Eno’s ‘The Ship’ in eco-packaging
Newly remastered by Miles Showell at Abbey Road
Celebrating forthcoming live performances ‘Ships’ featuring
Eno • Baltic Sea Philharmonic • Kristjan Järvi
Performances ~ Ships:
21st Oct, Venice ~ Biennale Musica 2023, Teatro La Fenice (3pm & 8pm) SOLD OUT
24th Oct, Berlin ~ Philharmonie Berlin ticket link
26th Oct, Paris ~ La Seine Musicale ticket link
28th Oct, Utrecht ~ TivoliVredenburg SOLD OUT
30th Oct, London ~ Royal Festival Hall, Southbank (6.30 & 9pm) ticket link
Reviews for ‘The Ship’:
“The Ship is a great, unexpected record. The title track and “Fickle Sun (i)” on their own and as a connected piece of music are marvelous accomplishments, distinctive in Eno’s catalog. And “I’m Set Free” immediately ranks among the most perfect-sounding pop songs Eno has ever had a hand in making.” – Pitchfork
“The music of “The Ship” is tolling and elegiac, while “Fickle Sun,” with lyrics about the “dismal work” of a soldier’s life, is in constant metamorphosis. Electronic sounds melt into orchestral upheavals and guitar distortion; voices, natural and synthetic, loom from all directions.” – The New York Times
“The Ship is the work of someone who fully believes in the power of art as an empathic tool, as a means to invoke a particular viewpoint, an unconsidered perspective.” – The Quietus
“Sits somewhere between the chilly calm of Music for Airports and the eerie evocations of the Suffolk landscape found on 1982’s On Land” – The Guardian
Astralwerks and UMe proudly announce the remastered re-issue of Eno’s seminal 2016 album The Ship, available on color vinyl (coke bottle green) on December 8. The release coincides with a series of live performances, Ships, which features Brian Eno with Baltic Sea Philharmonic and its conductor Kristjan Järvi and is a newly commissioned work from La Biennale di Venezia. The first performance will premiere on October 21 in Teatro la Fenice as the centerpiece of the 2023 Venice Biennale Musica. Ships features an orchestral adaptation of The Ship as well as new and classic Eno compositions. Preorder Brian Eno’s The Ship HERE.
The Ship was the first Eno record to feature vocals since 2005’s Another Day On Earth and was inspired in part by the sinking of the Titanic and the First World War.
“Humankind seems to teeter between hubris and paranoia,” Brian said at the time, “the hubris of our ever-growing power contrasts with the paranoia that we’re increasingly under threat.”
The opening track, “The Ship,” and the second, “Fickle Sun (i),” unfold over the majority of the album. They then give way to “Fickle Sun (ii): The Hour Is Thin,” with narration from actor Peter Serafinowicz, and “Fickle Sun (iii),” a celebrated interpretation of The Velvet Underground’s “I’m Set Free.”
As well as performing with Baltic Sea Philharmonic and their conductor Kristjan Järvi, Ships, the performance will also bring to stage Peter Serafinowicz for a live cameo appearance, and support from long-time collaborators guitarist Leo Abrahams and programmer/keyboardist Peter Chilvers as well as additional vocals from Melanie Pappenheim.
“The album The Ship is an unusual piece in that it uses voice but doesn’t particularly rely on the song form,” says Brian. “It’s an atmosphere with occasional characters drifting through it and characters lost in the vague space made by the music. There’s a sense of wartime in the background and a sense of inevitability. There is also a sense of scale, which suits an orchestra, and a sense of many people working together.
I wanted an orchestra that played music the way I would like to play music: from the heart rather than just from the score. I wanted the players to be young, and fresh, and enthusiastic. When I first saw the Baltic Sea Philharmonic, I found all that…and then noticed they were named after a sea. That sealed it!”
The Ship
1LP Coloured Vinyl Edition of Brian Eno’s ‘The Ship’ in eco-packaging
conceived and written by • brian eno except “i’m set free” written by • lou reed
produced by • brian eno
assistant producer • peter chilvers
recorded by • brian eno and peter chilvers
additional singers & players
peter chilvers • programming, 3d sound analyst,
ableton live operator, string keyboards on the Ship
and additional keyboards and vocoder on fickle sun
leo abrahams • guitar on i’m set free
jon hopkins • keyboards on i’m set free
nell catchpole • violin and viola on i’m set free
peter serafinowicz • voice on the hour is thin
nuria homs • catalan voice on the Ship
members of the elgin marvels
siren voices on the Ship
all other instruments • brian eno
imagery by • brian eno & nick robertson
design by • nick robertson
mastered by • miles showell at abbey road studios
TRACKLISTING:
Side A
1. The Ship
Side B
1. Fickle Sun I
2. Fickle Sun II • The Hour Is Thin
3. Fickle Sun III • I’m Set Free
About Brian Eno:
Brian Eno – musician, producer, visual artist, and activist first came to international prominence in the early seventies as a founding member of the British band Roxy Music, followed by a series of solo albums and collaborations. His work as a producer includes albums with Talking Heads, Devo, U2, Laurie Anderson, James, Jane Siberry, and Coldplay, while his long list of collaborations includes recordings with David Bowie, Jon Hassell, Harold Budd, David Byrne, Grace Jones, his brother, Roger, on Mixing Colours and recently with Fred Again…. Brian’s most recent work, FOREVERANDEVERNOMORE released to international critical acclaim, was out in October 2022.
Brian Eno’s visual experiments with light and video continue to parallel his musical career, with exhibitions and installations all over the globe. He has exhibited extensively, as far afield as St. Petersburg’s Marble Palace, Ritan Park in Beijing, Arcos de Lapa in Rio de Janeiro, and the sails of the Sydney Opera House. He is a founding member of the Long Now Foundation, a trustee of Client Earth, and a patron of Videre est Credere. In April 2021, he launched EarthPercent, which raises money from the music industry for some of the most impactful environmental charities working on the climate emergency. Brian will be honored with the Golden Lion for Lifetime Achievement at the Venice Biennale Musica in October 2023.
About Baltic Sea Philharmonic:
The Baltic Sea Philharmonic takes the orchestral concert experience to a new dimension. Every performance is a voyage of musical discovery, as the musicians perform the entire program from memory, creating a one-of-a-kind artistic journey. Each concert is a unique spectacle of sound, light, choreography, visual art, and technology, and under the electrifying baton of Music Director and Founding Conductor Kristjan Järvi every performance is an electrifying experience that fizzes with infectious energy.
As a community of musicians from ten Nordic countries, the Baltic Sea Philharmonic transcends boundaries and has become a movement for bringing people together. Embodying all that is innovative and progressive about the Nordic region, this visionary ensemble is taking the traditional orchestral model further than ever before.
Bringing together musicians from Norway to Russia, the Baltic Sea Philharmonic started life in 2008, initiated by the Usedom Music Festival. Immediately acclaimed for its performances and its powerful message of unity in a historically divided region, it was soon playing at renowned festivals and in the most prestigious concert halls in Europe and abroad, including the Elbphilharmonie Hamburg and the Dubai Opera. In 2015, the European Culture Foundation ‘Pro Europe’ honored the orchestra’s achievements with the prestigious European Culture Prize. The world’s finest artists, including Julia Fischer, the late Kurt Masur, Gidon Kremer, and Max Richter, as well as British indie pop band Bastille, all performed with the orchestra. Concerts of the Baltic Sea Philharmonic are broadcast globally. The orchestra’s albums for Sony include Wagner – The Ring, An Orchestral Adventure, Sleeping Beauty, and a collaboration with Swiss violinist David Nebel.
The Baltic Sea Philharmonic is passionate about innovation in the digital landscape. Amid the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, the orchestra and Kristjan Järvi started ‘Musical Chain,’ an ongoing series of original music remix videos giving classical gems a contemporary twist. Through this innovative project, the Baltic Sea Philharmonic is evolving from an orchestra into a band, with the musicians becoming producers as well as creators.
About Kristjan Järvi: Kristjan Järvi lives and breathes music, using its power to create spaces in which anything is possible. Kristjan Järvi pursues his pioneering ideas as a conductor, producer, composer, and arranger. Embracing everything with creative entrepreneurship. he runs his own production company, Sunbeam Productions.
‘Kristjan Järvi has earned a reputation as one of the canniest, and most innovative, programmers on the classical scene’ (Reuters). As a conductor, he is at home on the big international stages, directing great classics from Wagner to Tchaikovsky and from Steve Reich to Radiohead, as well as his original productions without any genre boundaries.
Kristjan Järvi developed his own unique sound with his New York-based, classical-hip-hop-jazz group Absolute Ensemble, Baltic Sea Philharmonic, and Sunbeam’s in-house Band ‘Nordic Pulse’. Kristjan shapes his artistic life and takes expression to the next level with his team of ‘Sunbeam Productions’, with whom he creates a new paradigm for multi-sensory performance Xperiences. At the end of 2020, Kristjan founded a new record label: “nEscapes”. Besides online music distribution, it offers its own unique “nEscapes Lounges” to artists as a new listening format.
Besides his own productions, Kristjan Järvi collaborates internationally with outstanding artists like director Tom Tykwer (for the soundtrack of Babylon Berlin) and recording artists like MUM, Bryce Dessner (The National), Hauschka, Robot Koch and Max Richter and is staring in the “Bastille Re-Orchestrated” Documentary on Amazon Prime at the moment.
Kristjan is exclusively signed as a composer and producer with BMG Music under its label, Modern Recordings. His latest album is called Nordic Escapes.