Small Craft on a Milk Sea is a 2010 album by British musician and record producer Brian Eno. The album—his debut with Warp—was released in Japan on 19 October 2010, in the United States on 2 November, and the United Kingdom on 15 November. The album was recorded with collaborators Jon Hopkins and Leo Abrahams in 2009 and 2010 and was released in several formats, including Compact Disc; digital download; a box set featuring the album on Compact Disc, vinyl, and download, a bonus CD with four extra tracks, and a lithograph by Eno; and another box set with all of the previous media and a 12" square silkscreen print by Eno and a copper plate.
Recording
Small Craft on a Milk Sea was recorded in collaboration with Abrahams and Hopkins in 2009 and 2010. Some sessions were recorded in September 2009, while Abrahams recorded his own album and performed with David Byrne on the Songs of David Byrne and Brian Eno Tour to promote Everything That Happens Will Happen Today. The trio also entered the studio in April 2010, to record music that was rejected from the film soundtrack to The Lovely Bones and five of those tracks ended up on Small Craft on a Milk Sea. The music recorded for this album was mostly improvised and inspired by the sound of soundtrack albums and film scores; some of the songs were composed by choosing random chords played for arbitrary intervals with improvised electronic parts on top of the melody and then edited together to make a proper song. When the music was recorded for the album, Eno sequenced it to create a "macro-composition" that contains themes that run throughout the album.
News broke of the proposed Eno album in July 2010; the following month, Abrahams prematurely leaked details of the album, including the fact that Eno had signed to Warp to release the project. On 30 September 2010, Eno released the track "2 Forms of Anger" for free streaming on the Internet to promote the album and followed this with "Horse" on 15 October. On 18 October, "Emerald and Stone" was made available for previewing.
Seven Sessions on a Milk Sea
Abrahams, Eno, and Hopkins also recorded a series of performance films featuring brand new improvised compositions to promote the album. A new piece was released each week for seven weeks, each with a unique partner website from a different nation. The first to go live were "Instant Nuclear Family" with Japan's Rockin'On and "Signal Success" with The New York Times. The track listing for the seven sessions can be found below.Small Craft on a Milk Sea is a 2010 album by British musician and record producer Brian Eno. The album—his debut with Warp—was released in Japan on 19 October 2010, in the United States on 2 November, and the United Kingdom on 15 November. The album was recorded with collaborators Jon Hopkins and Leo Abrahams in 2009 and 2010 and was released in several formats, including Compact Disc; digital download; a box set featuring the album on Compact Disc, vinyl, and download, a bonus CD with four extra tracks, and a lithograph by Eno; and another box set with all of the previous media and a 12" square silkscreen print by Eno and a copper plate.
Recording
Small Craft on a Milk Sea was recorded in collaboration with Abrahams and Hopkins in 2009 and 2010. Some sessions were recorded in September 2009, while Abrahams recorded his own album and performed with David Byrne on the Songs of David Byrne and Brian Eno Tour to promote Everything That Happens Will Happen Today. The trio also entered the studio in April 2010, to record music that was rejected from the film soundtrack to The Lovely Bones and five of those tracks ended up on Small Craft on a Milk Sea. The music recorded for this album was mostly improvised and inspired by the sound of soundtrack albums and film scores; some of the songs were composed by choosing random chords played for arbitrary intervals with improvised electronic parts on top of the melody and then edited together to make a proper song. When the music was recorded for the album, Eno sequenced it to create a "macro-composition" that contains themes that run throughout the album.
News broke of the proposed Eno album in July 2010; the following month, Abrahams prematurely leaked details of the album, including the fact that Eno had signed to Warp to release the project. On 30 September 2010, Eno released the track "2 Forms of Anger" for free streaming on the Internet to promote the album and followed this with "Horse" on 15 October. On 18 October, "Emerald and Stone" was made available for previewing.
Seven Sessions on a Milk Sea
Abrahams, Eno, and Hopkins also recorded a series of performance films featuring brand new improvised compositions to promote the album. A new piece was released each week for seven weeks, each with a unique partner website from a different nation. The first to go live were "Instant Nuclear Family" with Japan's Rockin'On and "Signal Success" with The New York Times. The track listing for the seven sessions can be found below.false2024-04-13 18:10:23Small Craft on a Milk Sea1020102010-11-022010-11-0249AmbientDowntempoElectronicRock12063421664981878f0a9-0514-30b8-80b7-fab6c6c5edfbff95eb47-41c4-4f7f-a104-cdc30f02e8720d0c7a79-39e0-4ccd-a776-cd4b7b75ca59/media/data/media5/Music/Brian Eno/Small Craft on a Milk Sea (2010)/folder.jpgBrian EnoAlbumArtist/config/metadata/People/B/Brian Eno/folder.jpgBrian EnoArtist/config/metadata/People/B/Brian Eno/folder.jpgBrian EnoBrian EnoBrian Peter George Eno (; born 15 May 1948), also mononymously known as Eno, is an English musician, songwriter, record producer and visual artist. He is best known for his pioneering contributions to ambient music and electronica, and for producing, recording, and writing works in rock and pop music. A self-described "non-musician", Eno has helped introduce unconventional concepts and approaches to contemporary music. He has been described as one of popular music's most influential and innovative figures. In 2019, he was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame as a member of Roxy Music.
Born in Suffolk, Eno studied painting and experimental music at the art school of Ipswich Civic College in the mid-1960s, and then at Winchester School of Art. He joined the glam rock group Roxy Music as its synthesiser player in 1971 and recorded two albums with them before departing in 1973. He then released a number of solo pop albums, beginning with Here Come the Warm Jets (1974), and explored minimal music with the influential recordings Discreet Music (1975) and Ambient 1: Music for Airports (1978), with the latter coining the term "ambient music".
Alongside his solo work, Eno collaborated frequently with other musicians in the 1970s, including Robert Fripp (as part of the duo Fripp & Eno), Harmonia, Cluster, Harold Budd, David Bowie, and David Byrne. He also established himself as a sought-after producer, working on albums by John Cale, Jon Hassell, Laraaji, Talking Heads, Ultravox, and Devo, as well as the no wave compilation No New York (1978). In subsequent decades, Eno continued to record solo albums, and produce for other artists, most prominently U2, Coldplay and Peter Gabriel, and including Daniel Lanois, Laurie Anderson, Grace Jones, Slowdive, Karl Hyde, James, Kevin Shields, and Damon Albarn.
Dating back to his time as a student, Eno has also worked in other media, including sound installations, film and writing. In the mid-1970s, he co-developed Oblique Strategies, a deck of cards featuring aphorisms intended to spur creative thinking. From the 1970s onwards, his installations have included the sails of the Sydney Opera House in 2009 and the Lovell Telescope at Jodrell Bank in 2016. An advocate of a range of humanitarian causes, Eno writes on a variety of subjects and is a founding member of the Long Now Foundation. His modern political activism has also included Gazan tragedy awareness before and during the 2023-24 Gaza–Israel conflict, climate change awareness, anti-Toryism, and the freedom and release of Julian Assange.