Listen: Brian Eno Embraces Robot Funk on 'Glitch'

Brian Eno collaborated with poet Rick Holland to create Drums Between the Bells, the innovative musician and producer's second album for the highly respected electronic music label Warp Records. Whereas Eno's previous album for the label, Small Craft on a Milk Sea, favored dirty guitars and ambient drones, the first track from Drums, "Glitch," leans hard on funky bass and buzzing synthesizers. Holland's words are delivered in a computerized monotone, making the song come off like the disco daydreams of a very pensive hard drive. The album will be in stores on July 5th, but you can hear the song in the SoundCloud stream below.

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Song Stories

“Piano Man”

Billy Joel | 1973

Billy Joel’s first hit, “Piano Man,” was – ironically – an autobiographical lament about how his first album wasn’t a hit. When Cold Spring Harbor didn’t take off, Joel briefly became a lounge pianist in Los Angeles, and this song, about that experience, expressed his frustrations and fears at the time: “And they sit at the bar and put bread in my jar/And say, ‘Man, what are you doing here?’” “It was all right,” Joel said later, about the gig. “I got free drinks and union scale, which was the first steady money I’d made in a long time.”

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