Could be a bass guitar processed throught God-knows-what.<<
Exactly. The personnel/credits listed on Eno's albums are filled with odd
instrument names anyway; for instance, in 'Another Green World' you have,
among others, Snake Guitar, Desert Guitar, Club Guitar, Restrained Guitar
and, of course, the lovely Uncertain Piano ;)
This is the first time I post here, by the way, and there's a little
something I'd like to share. I'm from Chile (the country, not the vegetable)
and even though AGW has been one of my favorite records for many years now,
I *just* realized that "Everything Merges With The Night" could be about my
homeland after reading this footnote I found at
http://www.pdi.net/~eristic/yes/tr_131.html :
"The final vocal track on the album is 'Everything Merges With The Night', a
track which somehow manages to describe the romantic and social tensions of
a Chilean Communist following the deposition of Salvador Allende's
government (...) The key to understanding this song is the line
'Santiago/Under the volcano/Floats like a cushion on the sea/But I can never
sleep here/Everything ponders in the night'. Santiago is the capital of
Chile, is a coastal city suspended above sea level, and borders a mountain
range (which isn't quite the same as a volcano, I suppose, but some leeway
can be given here). The previous verse contains the line 'Seems like I can't
remember/Longer than last September'. The song may very well have been
written in (or at least set in) 1974. Allende's government was overthrown by
Augusto Pinochet on Sept. 11, 1973."
Now, although it is located above sea level (1,700 feet approximately),
Santiago is not a coastal city by any means - it's actually in the middle of
a depression, pretty much surrounded by mountains. And yes, there is a big
difference between a volcano and the regular Andes. Also, there are many
other interpretations, like this one at
http://music.hyperreal.org/artists/brian_eno/AGWlyrics.html :
"I've wondered in listening to this song whether the first line of the third
verse "Santiago, under the volcano" might not be a reference to Malcolm
Lowry's novel 'Under the Volcano' -- one of the more formidable portrayals
of alcoholism in print."
So what do you guys think? (If anybody believes that it doesn't really
matter and that we should only give a fuck about the feeling the song
provides, hey, I don't mind at all :) )