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Aug 22, 2011The decision to vary the speaking participants helps distinguish each piece, and gives the album just the hint of variety it needs.
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Aug 18, 2011The problem with it, beyond a handful of unflattering genre excursions, is a slight but persistent thinness of imagination.
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UncutAug 19, 2011Drums Between The Bells captures Eno in versatile and intricate mode. [Aug 2011, p.82]
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Aug 18, 2011Drums Between the Bells feels like one big obstacle of an album.
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MojoNov 22, 2011In louder and busier sections it's easy to lose the text and there's no melody as consolation. [Aug. 2011, p. 94]
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Q MagazineAug 19, 2011Holland's fragmentary syntax, rendered in a variety of heavily treated voices, rarely proves as mesmeric as the music. [Aug 2011, p.116]
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Aug 18, 2011An album of poetry set to music might not be what the world wants from Brian Eno.
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Aug 22, 2011At times Drums Between The Bells is too busy, too packed with musical style and incident, but its patchwork nature reveals itself over subsequent listens to be a largely rewarding one.
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Aug 19, 2011Even if the project isn't a wholly qualified success, Eno is still putting most of his peers to shame. [Jul 2011, p.84]
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Aug 18, 2011Glitch's motorik electronics and Seedpods' airy grooves are compelling, but at times it feels as if Eno is stubbornly working against himself.
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Aug 22, 2011The main flaw with Eno and Holland's collaboration is that words which, read on a page or spoken into silence, might have the space to spark a host of mental images, here frequently seem flattened by the music.
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Aug 22, 2011Holland's muse guides the album, and his ultra-serious counterculturalisms can be a drag after a while.
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Aug 18, 2011Sonic strategist Eno is clearly in "oblique" mode here.
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Aug 22, 2011The cadences, demeanors and vocal tones certainly add an interesting wrinkle to Eno's dynamic, but a few exceptions aside, I'm generally too enraptured in his rich compositions to decipher the staggered wordplay.
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Aug 22, 2011While this album may have taken that last bit a little too literally (or perhaps not literally enough?), it has moments that do just that, blending the perfect amount of dance-ability, intrigue, and emotional power.
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Aug 18, 2011Often it feels more like an overly conscious art project rather than an album that will sustain repeated listening; it's undeniably, admirably beautiful in parts, but ultimately too consciously cerebral and self satisfied to love.
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Aug 22, 2011The glitch distortions and keyboard drones are well chosen, even when guest readers (including a woman from Eno's gym) prove hit and miss.
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Aug 18, 2011Like many of Eno's projects, Drums Between the Bells skips around fitfully off a loose central theme, leaving room for big stylistic gaps and a little bit of dead space.
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Aug 22, 2011Drums Between the Bells at its simplest is often Drums Between the Bells at its best.
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Aug 18, 2011Drums Between The Bells is challenging and complex, but evocative, rewarding, and not altogether fragmentary, not even (or especially) when you bust up the long-playing order.
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Aug 22, 2011The record, lacking choruses or pop hooks, isn't one to turn to for instant gratification. Instead, it's an engaging marriage of words and music.
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Aug 18, 2011If Small Craft on a Milk Sea was an installation piece in the museum of Brian Eno's career, requiring rapt attention to find meaning, Drums Between the Bells is modern art that immediately captures those witnessing it in a state of aesthetic arrest.
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The WireAug 23, 2011Everything is warm and accessible, occasionally too much so. [Jul 2011, p.48]
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Aug 18, 2011It's pleasant enough, but sometimes the words do rather get in the way.
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Aug 22, 2011The combination of Eno's obsession with stasis and his attachment to novelty for its own sake does the album in.
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Aug 22, 2011It is, frankly, classic Eno. Holland too emerges from it well, though his contributions tend to be less immediate.
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Aug 22, 2011All the same, Drums Between the Bells makes for a richly atmospheric listen, one that allows the listener to cut the cord from reality and float off into a beautifully curated space.
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Aug 22, 2011Drums Between the Bells is by no means an embarrassment, but don't look for it to be lumped into the upper echelon of Eno's output either, where triumphs like Discreet Music or Another Green World reside.
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Aug 18, 2011An equally engaging sonic concept entitled Drums Between The Bells.
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Aug 22, 2011The effect is softly inclusive without being entirely bland, and even if Holland's poetry doesn't ring your bell as poetry, then it certain works in this context as sound-art.
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Aug 22, 2011The newly minted Drums Between the Bells with poet Rick Holland, don't break ground, but serve as pleasant place-holders for Eno obsessives.
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Aug 22, 2011Somehow, when put together, the artists' individual strengths are watered down, resulting in a mixture of the benign and the over-the-top, depending on the particular song.