Recorded a year after Here Come the Warm Jets, Taking Tiger Mountain (By Strategy) was a rock record on its surface, full of tightly crafted pop songs with a sturdy, bass-heavy footprint that evoked the mountain of the title. But it also represented another step in Eno's quest to turn music "cybernetic"; it's fair to say that he "programmed" his band in much the same way a software engineer might design an application.

Working with the artist Peter Schmidt, Eno designed a set of cards with koan-like instructions — "From nothing to more than nothing"; "Think of the radio"; "Remove ambiguities and convert to specifics" — designed to redirect the creative process in unpredictable ways. These cards, which eventually were collected in a set entitled Oblique Strategies, deployed such cues as "If/Then" statements to send the music on its own circuitous journey through the players' hands and Eno's mixer and effects. (Some of them — like "Always give yourself credit for having more than personality" — served as a way for Eno himself to escape the rock-star mystique that he had developed as a member of Roxy Music.)

The core ensemble consisted of Eno, Roxy Music's Phil Manzanera, the Winkies' Brian… read more »