Tom Rogerson with Brian Eno - Finding Shore

The Guardian 80

(Dead Oceans)

Three Trapped Tigers frontman Tom Rogerson plays piano and submits himself to Eno’s improvisational techniques on his debut solo album. In a very Enoesque way, a chance meeting outside a toilet led to the producer training infrared beams on the pianist’s keys and improvising around signals created when the beams were broken. The results are easy enough to digest, even if the process isn’t, with just enough repetition and structure to prevent attention drift. Most of the pieces forgo any sort of rhythm, although the baleful ambience of March Away’s percussion is so good that it’s a shame the pair didn’t pursue it.

Pitchfork 80

A collaboration between an improvising pianist and the ambient icon yields an unusual fusion of acoustic and electronic ideas—a meeting of minds that is full of rewarding surprises.

Drowned In Sound 60

Finding Shore operates in a completely different musical environment, Rogerson and Eno (who met outside the toilets after a gig) using only the sounds of piano (sometimes played straight and sometimes manipulated to create electronic-leaning soundscapes) to create a record straight out of the early Eno ambient series playbook. Opening piece ‘Idea of Order at Kyson Point’ is genuinely gorgeous, with layers of ambience gradually unfolding to allow a stunningly beautiful piano line to take centre stage. ‘Motion in Field’, appropriately enough, has a rather more kinetic sensibility, Eno’s manipulated keys surrounding Rogerson’s melodies with gentle chatter, allowing the piece to buzz gently as it builds.

The problem with Finding Shore is that – for all its moments of genuine beauty – the record never quite feels substantial enough. In that sense, this is a pretty album, but one that lacks a certain amount of compositional weight. Compared to tonally similar work by David Moore (Bing & Ruth), or perhaps continuous music mastermind Lubomyr Melnyk, for example, Finding Shore too often leaves itself open to being accused of lacking a certain richness of palate. In this sense, the decision to create the entire record via the medium of the piano has its minor drawbacks, and prevents the record pushing anywhere particularly new after its opening exchanges.

That isn’t to say that Finding Shore is anything but an enjoyable, meditative listen. In fact, this record could be accused of flying by… albeit in a similar fashion to countryside view from the window of a speeding cross-country train. It has an air of transience that could be said to make it less than the sum of its parts. Then again, it’s hard to be too critical of that when some of the record’s most jaw-droppingly gorgeous moments arrive, not least the closing triumvirate of ‘An Iken Loop’, ‘Chain Home’, and ‘Rest’. It is in this record’s opening salvo and in its closing stages that its aim, of reflecting the natural beauty of eastern England, where both Rogerson and Eno grew up, comes closest to being accomplished.