After last year’s ambient Small Craft on a Milk Sea, here Eno rekindles his occasional love affair with lyrics: not his own, but those of the poet Rick Holland. “Bless this space in sound and rhyme” intones Eno in a promisingly godly manner over the opening track, a percussive, synth-flecked groove. Unfortunately both words and music soon slip into mediocrity: Glitch sounds like a parody of Thom Yorke covering Kraftwerk; Sounds Alien is a dated mash-up of industrial guitar and funk horns; and the various female guests read lines such as “Deep sea molluscs can glow orange in tendrils” as if they’re giving elocution lessons.
(Warp; out Mon)