I've been listening to this cd by Robert Fripp and Brian Eno frequently since I bought it a week ago. It's not really my kind of music; in fact, it's not really music, as far as I understand the meaning of the term. I bought the disc because I was fascinated by the descriptions of the sounds contained within, and the only way that I could really listen was by purchasing.
If it's not music, what is it? Maybe the cure for insomnia, the slowed down, spaced out rambling musing of two musicians who have done better. If the whole thing were speeded up by two, it would sound like the adolescent rambling which I used to make on a nylon string guitar. Random and directionless. Had it been played at twice the speed with electric guitars and a rhythm section, it might well have been described as musical wanking. I don't live my life at the ponderous rate required to make this interesting (and by comparison, neither do I live fast enough to make punk rock or high energy rock or hip hop interesting).
It really is not my kind of music. I need a strong harmonic base, followed by a melody and then rhythm. That's probably why I'm so at odds with current "music", which seems to be based on a strong rhythm, followed by a minimal melody and no harmony.
The only disc which I have that is connected to Eno is his production of Paul Simon's latest, 'Surprise', and whilst Eno's contributions are ear-tickling, they send Simon's songs into a direction which I don't like (see above paragraph).
Fripp, on the other hand, is well documented in my discography. Well, the younger Fripp is, at any rate. It's a curious relationship that I have with his music (when I write "Fripp", I generally mean "Fripp's music" and not Fripp himself), which is probably due to the circumstances in which I first heard him. Being of the age that I am (or was), "21st century schizoid man" was the first track that I ever heard with Robert Fripp playing, and of course the guitar playing within is at a very high level. This was early 1970, and the King Crimson which produced the first record no longer existed; the only musician who had a visible profile left was Robert Fripp (well, so did Greg Lake, but he was only the bassist and didn't seem to have much to do with the first album apart from singing on it). The miraculous playing on 21CSM and the group's virtual disappearance caused Fripp the man to achieve almost mythical status, and when he reappeared in the flesh (touring with Keith Tippett's Centipede in 1971), it became almost a pilgrimage to see him.
I liked Fripp's contribution to two early VdGG albums, and especially what he played on Hammill's contemparaneous "Fool's Mate"; I loved KC's "Lizard" (although Fripp doesn't actually play that much on this disc), whereas its followup "Islands" left me fairly cool. In 1972, Fripp and King Crimson dropped off my radar until 1976 when I purchased "The young man's guide to King Crimson"; my jaw dropped open whilst playing side two (of the four sided vinyl set) which consisted solely of "Red" and "Starless".
I bought "Exposure" when it came out in 1979, as much for Peter Hammill as for Robert Fripp; this was very much a hit and miss record which made me finally realise that Fripp and I were not a marriage made it heaven. It wasn't until 2002 when I started reading Andrew Keeling's analyses of King Crimson material that I started listening to the old records (even buying some on cd) and searching out the material that I missed. Whilst this adult listening to the music of my youth increased my appreciation of what I liked before, it didn't extend to enjoying music which I hadn't heard before. "Discipline" (with the exception of "Matte Kudesai") left me cold and disinclined to investigate anything more modern (and that's 1982!).
It's a lesson which I've attended several times, but not really taken to heart: most of Robert Fripp's music is not for me, despite however seductive the writing about it may be.
Incidentally, neither do I like very little of Peter Hammill's post VdGG output. Whilst I religiously bought the vinyl records until the end of the 80s, I rarely played them and I haven't bothered to replace many of them on cd. I did buy 2003's "Incoherence" (the album which he had just finished prior to his heart attack), but I don't recall actually ever listening to the disc all the way through.
There is a dichomoty at the bottom of my heart: always looking for new music, but not necessarily liking it when I find it. I prefer to explore and discover new things within music to which I been listening for years. For example, my sequencing work on "Scorched Earth" brings my admiration for VdGG's music to an even higher level (it's a shame that "The Book", the VdGG biography, didn't go into any technical detail about the music in the same way that Sid Smith's book on King Crimson did). For example, I only belatedly realised something the other day about Crimson's 21stCSM: the instrumental material which is not based on a one chord modal workout is actually based on the 12 bar blues!
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