Taking Tiger Mountain (By Strategy)
Taking Tiger Mountain (By Strategy) is the second solo studio album by Brian Eno (mononymously credited as "Eno"), released in November 1974 by Island Records. Unlike his debut album Here Come the Warm Jets, which featured 16 musicians, this album utilized a core band of five instrumentalists: Eno (keyboards, guitar), Phil Manzanera (guitar), Brian Turrington (bass guitar), Freddie Smith (drums), and Robert Wyatt (percussion). Manzanera also participated in the writing and production. To help guide the musicians, Eno and Peter Schmidt developed instruction cards called Oblique Strategies to facilitate creativity during the recording process.
For other uses, see Taking Tiger Mountain by Strategy (disambiguation).Taking Tiger Mountain (By Strategy) is a loose concept album that references themes of geopolitical intrigue ranging from espionage to the Chinese Communist Revolution. It did not chart in the United Kingdom or the United States, but received positive reviews from critics. Since its release, the album has received even more critical attention.
Music and lyrics[edit]
The sound of Taking Tiger Mountain (By Strategy) has been described as more subdued than Eno's previous solo album, while the lyrics have darker themes and subject matter.[13][8][14] The album's lyrics have been described as "remarkably literate and often humorous" with "quick-fire rhymes, oddball couplets, abrupt demands, and ruthless statements".[11][15] To create the lyrics, Eno sang nonsense syllables to the record's backing tracks and then turned them into words.[6] This lyric-writing method was used for all his more vocal-based recordings of the 1970s.[16]
References to China appear in the album's songs, including "Burning Airlines Give You So Much More," "China My China," and "Taking Tiger Mountain".[6] Steve Huey of AllMusic described the album's themes as "often inscrutable, but still playful – about espionage, the Chinese Communist revolution, and dream associations".[13] On the political theme within the lyrics and album title, Eno explained that he is "not Maoist or anything like that; if anything I'm anti-Maoist".[6] The album addresses several different esoteric topics. "Burning Airlines Give You So Much More" is inspired by a 1974 crash near Paris of a Turkish Airlines DC-10, one of the worst air crashes in history.[14] "The Fat Lady of Limbourg", described by Eno as a "Burroughs-type song" about an asylum in Limbourg, Belgium, where the residents of it outnumber the population of the town.[14] "The Great Pretender" describes the rape of a suburban housewife by a crazed machine.[14]
Release[edit]
Taking Tiger Mountain (By Strategy) was released in November 1974 in a gatefold sleeve.[7][13] No singles were released from the album, and it failed to chart in either the United Kingdom or the United States.[17][18]
In 2004, Taking Tiger Mountain was reissued by Virgin Records in remastered digipak form.[19]
Note
Works cited