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Nov 2, 2010It's an uncharacteristically diverse album for the electronic-music pioneer-one that grew out of several years of improvising with previous collaborators Jon Hopkins and Leo Abraham-and it bears the stylistic fluctuations of a work long in development, with eerily plucked guitars and tense piano lines giving way to doomsday lasers, Aphex Twin skitter, and finally, refracted versions of earlier tracks à la Ambient 2: The Plateaux Of Mirror.
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Nov 23, 2010Another resplendent nonpareil from Eno (and a collaborative improvisation with Leo Abraham and Jon Hopkins), this is veritably a spontaneous soundtrack to an inferential film, one that is essentially revealed in the imagination of the listener.
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Nov 22, 2010Rather than anticipating something new, Small Craft on a Milk Sea ultimately feels like one of the final surges of a style and format that Eno himself is outgrowing.
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Nov 16, 2010Things move from melodic ambience to galloping sci-fi workouts and back again, the highlight being the sublime 'Emerald And Stone'.
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Nov 15, 2010After all these years, he's still got it.
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Nov 10, 2010Small Craft... isn't an album that's going to change the world forever, but listened to in the right environment it sometimes does just that for a few minutes at a time.
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Nov 10, 2010For the most part, Small Craft on a Milk Sea slots back into that forward thinking mindset, creating further realms of possibility for Eno to operate in.
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Nov 9, 2010Even when it seems a bit disjointed on close inspection, it's when you take a step back that this album really comes into focus.
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Nov 5, 2010Eno may be trading on his earlier developments in ambience, but Small Craft on a Milk Sea is a good and proper balance of curiosity and expression.
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Nov 5, 2010While most of the album is at least somewhat experimental in nature, Eno includes some reminders that he could probably compose a soundtrack for the afterlife if he felt the calling.
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Nov 4, 2010With few exceptions, Small Craft on a Milk Sea's 15 songs fall roughly into one of two categories: ambient and active.
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Nov 3, 2010Small Craft probably wouldn't make it as an art installation. It gets too diverse and obstreperous to make good musical wallpaper.
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Nov 3, 2010Though it might sound like a cold place, Eno's primordial milk sea is often choppy and warm, the kind of rough and imperfect environment where ideas ignite.
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Nov 2, 2010Small Craft is something different: a rhythmically aggressive Brian Eno album.
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Nov 2, 2010Like everything Eno touches, the album is riddled with baffling and stimulating forays into unexpected territories.
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Nov 1, 2010Small Craft on a Milk Sea gives us the classically transportive experience that Brian Eno excels in creating.
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Nov 1, 2010Mr. Eno produced Small Craft on a Milk Sea from studio improvisations he shared with the electronica musician Jon Hopkins and the guitarist Leo Abrahams, blending their musicianly interactions with the impersonal, repetitive processes of loops and beats and blurring any distinction between human and mechanized.
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Nov 1, 2010It's at once more lithe and more aggressive an album than we've heard from Eno in years; and while sometimes the pieces feel too short (or, in some cases, just plain incomplete), Small Craft offers a promising sampler of sonic possibilities from an artist as immune to fashion as his music is to time.
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Oct 29, 2010Eno unleashes tempests of breakbeats ("Horse"), electro exotica ("Bone Jump"), even roiling post-rock ("2 Forms of Anger"), creating a perfect storm.
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Oct 29, 2010Another victory in a storied career, Small Craft on a Milk Sea is Eno's attempt to reiterate the relevance of the long-player through its unique sequencing.
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MojoNov 4, 2010Aficionados will hear a master ambient craftsman in his element. [Dec. 2010, p. 95]
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UncutOct 29, 2010All this makes the album sound like an arid conservatoire experiment, but it's more than that. Many of its tracks, like Morricone-feeling "Written, Forgotten," are designed to drift into the background--upmarket mood music, if you will--but others demand your attention. [Dec 2010, p.89]
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Alternative PressOct 29, 2010On Small Craft, the 62-year-old Eno has provided both sonic career overview, as well as an engaging experience for listeners wanting something both familiar and new. [Dec 2010, p.111]