The Fripp solo album was suprisingly good, and researching it a bit lead me to some collaborations with Brian Eno that I hadn't heard about. I like some of Brian Eno's solo stuff (about half of each of his rockier albums, about a third of his ambient stuff) and mostly respect the rest. It seems like a combination that could be promising.
Or it might just be too much experimentation. This album is two 20 minutish songs, with some evolving tape loop experiments in the background while Fripp noodles his guitar over them. The ambient side I kind of like. It rewards close listening, even if it kind of gives me a headache. Maybe I just spend too much time in front of my computer. All these headaches. Maybe I just need to listen to less dissonant music.
The real problem is the noodling. The guitar playing is just too aimless, too rambling, nothing hooky about it, no riffs, no ostinato at all. I'm ok with jammy guitar. At times I really like highly repetitive, ambient music. But the combination just doesn't work for me. The best part of the album is the first half of the second track, before the guitar noise comes in and has a seizure on it.
There's some branch of arty music that so far I just can't seem to appreciate. I understand that this was pretty amazing at the time, being composed without synthesizers as we know them, nor via loops as we know them. As art and technology, sure, impressive. As actual music, I don't enjoy it enough for more than 2.5/5
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