Brian Eno has been a busy little bee. Not that his prolific career has seen many lulls, but he seems to be more around these days, what with a jaunt of new releases, production cred on Coldplay’s latest, and a new visual art installation—not to mention being interviewed on The Colbert Report on Thursday. Now, a paltry four months after releasing Drums Between the Bells, he has teamed up again with poet and recently frequent collaborator Rick Holland on a new EP, essentially an extension of that album’s preoccupation with a false music-poetry/poetry-music dichotomy. The poems/lyrics are available on Eno’s website.

Eno recites the majority of the works on this one, with the exception of “West End” and a solitary instrumental track (“watch a single swallow in a thermal sky, and try to fit its motion, or figure why it flies”). Both vocally and musically, he interprets Holland aptly and with characteristic efficiency, somehow coaxing from his deceptively monotone delivery all the restrained jubilation of “In the Future,” the static build of “Not a Story” and the controlled chaos of the EP’s title track, “Panic of Looking,” the inertia of “If These Footsteps.” The pensive “West End,” like “In the Future,” offers a nicely organic bookend to the collection, and hints at a narrative even in this small effort by Eno and Holland. The result is that Panic of Looking is concise and rarely seems off the mark with regard to its treatment of the words, whose universal modern themes of alienation and/or redemption are relevant enough without veering into vague apocalyptica or robotic angst.

If Eno is a less a revolutionary figure these days, it is not for any lack of craft but rather for the ubiquity of his influence in today’s music. Likewise, while this latest EP is not the greatest, it still merits an close listen – if for no other reason than to experience a working artist at work.

4 / 5 bars

Brian Eno and the words of Rick Holland – panic of looking by Warp Records

Panic of Looking streaming in full at ClashMusic