Kite Stories

AMG Review of Kite Stories

Ted Mills
All Music Guide

Music for an installation in the Kiasma Museum of Contemporary Art, Helsinki, the original music was eight layers of sound, each one playing on a CD player somewhere in the gallery -- as all the CDs looped, the combination of elements was infinite. The souvenir CD is, therefore, only a half-hour glimpse into an ever-changing work that lasted for two months. In Brian Eno's notes, he says that some of the sounds were 20 years old, while some were created just for the exhibit. Modal, ringing guitars, drifting, falling tones and textures, and mysterious insect sounds are close in feel to On Land or The Shutov Assembly. Eno also includes the heavily treated vocals of Kyoko Inatome (apparently a waitress from his favorite sushi restaurant) reading extracts from "Onmyo-ji," a Japanese ghost story -- an interest that would pop up later in Music for Onmyo-ji.