The cautious, deliberate “The Fat Lady Of Limbourg,” meanwhile, draws its inspiration from a Belgian asylum where there are more inmates than there are residents in the surrounding town, and “Burning Airlines Give You So Much More” reimagines the crash of Turkish Airlines Flight 981 in March 1974 as a languid Chinese and Japanese reverie (“How does she intend to live when she’s in far Cathay? I somehow can’t imagine her just planting rice all day”). “The Great Pretender,” blank and chilly, concerns the rape-by-machine of an ironically robotic and subservient housewife (“Joking aside, the mechanical bride has fallen prey to the great pretender”).
The album’s songs are vividly allusive, but narrative threads quietly unspool in the background. These included The Portsmouth Sinfonia’s queasy strings in the sinister lullaby “Put A Straw Under Baby,” Phil Collins’ measured drumming on “Mother Whale Eyeless” and a staccato sax part on “The Fat Lady Of Limbourg,” tackled by another of Eno’s former Roxy bandmates, Andy Mackay.įor all that Taking Tiger Mountain exalts in the deployment of apparently random factors, Eno’s contention that his lyrics were more about sound than sense is slightly disingenuous. Eno’s former Roxy Music bandmate, guitarist Phil Manzanera, and erstwhile Soft Machine vocalist/drummer Robert Wyatt were principal collaborators on an album that drew upon the input of a consistent studio ensemble, but which also found room for several memorable guest cameos. The result of this fresh methodology was an album which, with hindsight, represents a bridge between the voluble, impish, glammy decadence of Here Come The Warm Jets and the more pensive works which were to follow. Several were decidedly holistic – “Get your neck massaged,” “Tidy up,” “Breathe more deeply.” Some instructions were boldly challenging – “Ask people to work against their better judgment,” “Change instrument roles,” “Give way to your worst impulse” – while others teasingly contradicted those found elsewhere in the deck (“Don’t be frightened of clichés,” “Don’t break the silence,” “Fill every beat with something”). The cards, which Eno would regularly consult in succeeding years, were intended to derail recording and production techniques, overturn habits and/or inspire new avenues of thought in musicians and producer/engineers alike. Central to the new record’s creation was the principle of “Oblique Strategies”, a set of instruction cards devised by Eno and his artist friend Peter Schmidt (who also designed Taking Tiger Mountain’s sleeve).