Down on our words and we've nothing to be

(Brian) Eno - 'Here Come The Warm Jets' (Here Come The Warm Jets - 1974)

Here Come The Warm Jets was one of those albums I read about more than I heard at the start of the 2000s. Most of our readers will know what I mean in that you could not just go to a streaming service and find the album with minimal effort like kids nowadays can. Brian Eno was also different from the kind of artist you were likely to see a video of on VH1 or hear on national or commercial radio before BBC Radio 6 Music was launched. It was likely around Mar 2004 that I first heard the album in full when it was 30 years old. Now, 20 years on, we are mere weeks away from the album’s 50th anniversary in early February.

Eno has said that the closing track, and therefore the album, is named after the song’s guitar sound. He told Mojo in 1998 that;

The title Warm Jets came from the guitar sound on the track of that name, which I described on the track sheet as ‘warm jet guitar’, because it sounded like a tuned jet. Then I had the pack of playing cards with the picture of the woman in there, and they sort of connected. That was one of the things that was going on at the time: this idea that music was still tied to some idea of revolution, and that one of the revolutions was a sexual revolution. I wasn’t making a big political point, I just liked having fun with those things. Most people didn’t realise for a long time — it was rather deeply concealed.

That woman can be seen on the cover urinating, where this idea of the warm jets, meaning something more showery and golden, comes in—moving on!

That guitar sound doesn’t sound like a jet to me after the outro to ‘Some of Them Are Old’ gives way to the intro to ‘Here Comes The Warm Jets’ It could be a kazoo imitating a guitar or the other way around. While playing a kazoo is not something the album credits seem to mention, the track and the album are a real bedding in for Eno, the solo artist. Eno was formally in Roxy Music on synthesisers and “treatments” before leaving in 1973. This became a catalyst for the more experimental bent that Eno would take. To become Brian Eno the ambient godfather, he had to journey from where Roxy Music were on For Your Pleasure to get there and, Here Come the Warm Jets is that first step as he blends that pop/rock sound with those embryonic birth bangs of ambient music he would pioneer.

It shouldn’t be underplayed that Eno casually pre-empts whole musical genres by 20 years on this album; combining these elements was not commonplace before the end of that decade, and the entire album is almost a dry run for what Eno and David Bowie would go on to do in Berlin at the end of the seventies. You have layers of sound, distortion, synthesisers and an atmosphere that extends the boundaries of where traditional rock music lay in 1974.

Eno used various unconventional methods to achieve the distinctive sounds on the album, often incorporating 'found sounds' - everyday ambient noises recorded and then manipulated or integrated into the music. This could include anything from the refrigerator’s hum to rain hitting a window. The production exemplifies Eno's interest in what he would later term 'studio as a compositional tool' — using the recording studio itself as an instrument to shape and create music.

Eno is an artist who has attempted to dissuade fans from reading too much into his words; he claims that fellow Here Come The Warm Jets track. ‘Needles in the Camel's Eye’ was;

written in less time than it takes to sing ... I regard [the song] as an instrumental with singing on it.

After the long build on the album’s closing track, the vocals and music begin to die, slowly fading out the incredible build-up that lasted most of the entire song. The lyrics seem to reference how expansive and powerful the English empire was contrasted by how relatively poor and empty the lives of most of England’s people (and colonies) have been throughout history. If you wanted to be particularly fruity, you could suggest that rather than a critic against 19th-century imperialism, it’s a diss track aimed at Bryan Ferry, who had been accused of behaving like a dictator within Roxy Music. I’m unsure if this is the case for Eno and if he had a form of government and leadership in mind. Regardless, here is the actor Kevin Eldon as Chairman Mao as Bryan Ferry on Big Train from about 25 years ago

In many ways, Here Comes The Warm Jets lays the groundwork for Eno's later exploration into ambient music. The atmospheric qualities of tracks like ‘On Some Faraway Beach’ and ‘Blank Frank’ hinted at the more ambient textures he would explore in depth in albums like Another Green World and Discreet Music. Yet, simultaneously, the album retained a strong pop sensibility, evident in more accessible tracks like ‘Needle in the Camel's Eye’ and ‘Cindy Tells Me’. The title track is the laboratory test tube, where the balance of ingredients was first perfected.