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Critic Reviews
100
This is soul music, a healing balm for a time of revved-up experience and instant gratification.
6y
90
Reflection is quintessentially Eno. A beautiful, thought provoking and introspective body of work that is composed in a way that is still as unique and as radical as the man himself.
9y
90
Always perverse, Eno achieves the most when he does the least.
6y
90
Yes, the music alone can be easily appreciated for its virtuosity; however, the whole package assists people with their day-to-day lives and provokes mindfulness and interaction with the wider world.
9y
84
In composing a piece so well-defined yet so adaptable, Eno adds yet another page to ambient music canon.
9y
80
It is simply profoundly and stirringly beautiful, a piece with a deep, almost spiritual resonance while never once sounding New Age.
9y
80
In essence, Eno has created his ambient masterwork, in that, like the aforementioned river, the flow is relentless but ever varying.
3y
80
Reflection is an album of as high quality artistry as could possibly be expected.
6y
80
Brian Eno has nothing to prove, yet he still tries to find ways innovate the art form he once pioneered – a reflection on days long past us.
9mo
80
Imagining the patience required to perfect an LP that can essentially serve as an unbroken loop – yet offer intrigue along each step of the way – one gains more of an appreaciation of the effort that went into the delving of the human pathos that is Reflection.
9y
77
Eno's new ambient piece readily slots along works like the dreamlike Thursday Afternoon and 2012’s stately Lux. It feels the most pensive of his ambient works, flowing across 54 unbroken minutes.
9y
75
For those familiar with Eno, this prolonged passage will recall Music for Airports and most recently Lux, but drawn out to the faintest traces. These vacuous, minimal fields linger even longer as the piece nears its end and it's then that you recognize Eno's concealed purpose of manipulation.
9y
75
Reflection is the type of ambient music that is both accessible and deeply difficult to understand.
9y
75
Whether used as sonic wallpaper or the soundtrack for a lengthy meditation, Reflection is the kind of album useful for getting ideas percolating and nourishing interior worlds.
9y
75
If nothing else, it continues Eno’s recent streak of pushing himself in his later career, and fans should be unpacking this epic track for some time to come.
8y
70
Reflection continues with the type of albums he initiated with 1975's untouchable Discreet Music. The piece slowly unfolds over the course of an hour, with notes calmly being suspended in mid-air, only to drift away and pop up later at their leisure.
9y
70
This is music that’s never the same but sounds like it is, obsessed with the fact that it isn’t.
9y
60
The more you let it wash over you, the more it sucks you in to reveal internal structures.
3y
60
If there’s anything disappointing about Brian Eno’s career thus far, it’s that his oblique strategies have never taken him radically far away from the zones he settled and perfected.
8y
60
This techno-utopian lift music, while captivating, is not exactly worthy of eternity.
9y
60
It’s always a delight to hear a master ply his trade with such deftness as Eno does here, and that skill is what Reflection should be remembered for, rather than the clumsy execution of its creator’s grandiose concept.
9y
60
It’s maybe not something to play every day, but an ideal companion piece for when you’re feeling more contemplative than usual.
9y
58
The record can’t truly offer anything that he hasn’t given before more compellingly or creatively.
9y
50
While the threat that Ambient 1: Music for Airports posed nearly 40 years ago is carefully rehashed with each installment of Eno’s Ambient series, its effectivity has been nullified by decades of innovations toward (and bastardizations of) ambient music as a concept/genre.
9y
40
Reflection could be as radical as his older work, a minor record that feels innovative despite doing nothing original. But as someone with ADD, all I can say is that a CD is cheaper than wind-chimes, so get it if that’s what you’re looking for.
5y
AOTY MFs be like: I hate how boring Brian Eno is
My Brother in Christ, it's Ambient music
As an ambient record, it does exactly what it’s meant to do. It calms you down and creates a gentle, meditative space. That said, I definitely prefer some of his earlier ambient work much more. Those records felt more immersive and emotionally resonant, whereas this one leans heavily into pure simplicity.
Still, you have to admire how little it does and how effective that can be. Minimal to the core, whether that clicks with you or not.
For further clarification, I listened to the sixty-five minute cut of this track.
I really love and admire the sustained work done twenty-five and fifty minutes in. Excellent generative work again from Brian.
![desert sand feels warm at night - 夢の砂漠 [Dream Desert]](https://cdn2.albumoftheyear.org/200x0/album/473713-2.jpg)
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patton, royalflush, thisisabtlgrnd, erik, d_ism, Glitchy, polduan, OPENblinds, thinwhitedukBecome a Subscriber
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Track List
| 1 | Reflection 54:00 |
Total Length: 54 minutes
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