The Skies, They Shift Like Chords

Roger Eno’s second solo album for Deutsche Grammophon invites listeners to reflect on the nature of sound and silence. The skies, they shift like chords contains a dozen tracks that express nostalgia for something lost while projecting a sense of something timeless, like the renewal of the seasons or the rise and fall of the breath. The composer-pianist builds here on the soundworld of The Turning Year, his debut solo album for DG, adding layers of instrumental and electronic colours and including a song for his eldest daughter, the artist, vocalist and image maker Cecily Eno.

The skies, they shift like chords connects with universal feelings for place and home. It also reflects the particular roots of Roger Eno’s music in rural eastern England, a landscape shaped by centuries of agriculture and marked in recent decades by dwindling biodiversity and troubling ecological change.