Customer Reviews

Essential Fripp & Eno

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4 star:		(5)
3 star:		(3)
2 star:		(3)
1 star:		(2)

 

 

No Pussyfooting. Evening Star. Two of the first (and finest) ambient recordings ever made, records that paved the way for many to follow. Eno's ambient works (and many others), Fripp's Frippertronics and Soundscapes, all have their root here. Why, then, an 'essential' collection from only two records?

No Pussyfooting is included in its entirety, and it hasn't dated in the least since 1973. "Heavenly Music Corporation" presents waves of Fripp's dreamlike guitar endlessly whirling and flowing, perfect for talking or sleeping or relaxing or, well, just about anything. "Swastika Girls" takes us to a peaceful sunlit temple in the middle of nowhere. The keyboards and effects trickle and shimmer while varying guitar tones ride the waves. A universal and timeless album, one of the few I could recommend to just about anyone. Two Evening Star tracks are also included, but the other 36 minutes of that album are just as essential - especially "An Index of Metals."

And so we come to the usual marketing gimmick for this sort of compilation: the previously unreleased tracks. In this case it sounds like an ambient Fripp/Eno outtake given the Puff Daddy treatment by an amateur sound engineer working with substandard equipment in somebody's garage. There's an ambient tune in there somewhere, but it's blended with cheap, cheesy electronic drum sounds and inane voice samples. Why? This is the kind of thing I'd imagine them coming up with at 2 a.m. after an unproductive day, burned out and trying to do something for a laugh. The four variations on this one track fit with the rest of the music about as well as Garth Brooks sitting in with the Philadelphia Symphony.

This album basically replaces No Pussyfooting, but it's badly misnamed. Between those first two albums you'd have all the essential stuff; if you pick up this one, be ready to program out those last four tracks.

The musical experiments of King Crimson guitarist/founder Robert Fripp and electronic music pioneer/former Roxy Music member Brian Eno were definitely groundbreaking when they were released in the early to mid '70s. The pair released two albums, 1973's "No Pussyfooting" and 1975's "Evening Star", which paved the way for ambient and so-called 'new age' music.
With the 1994 compilation "The Essential Fripp and Eno", we are offered an excellent sampling of the noise that these two musicians made so long ago. The compilation includes the "No Pussyfooting" album in its entirety plus two tracks from "Evening Star" and the previously unreleased "Healthy Colours Parts 1-4" which was recorded in 1978.
"No Pussyfooting's" "The Heavenly Music Corporation" and "Swastika Girls" consist mostly of Robert Fripp performing fluid sustained guitar lines which are manipulated by Brian Eno using tape machines and a primitive synthesizer. It's beautiful and frantic at the same time.
"Wind on Water" and the title track from "Evening Star" have a more quieter surreal mood to them. "Evening Star" in particular has beautiful melodic parts with simplistic piano and guitar lines.
The unreleased "Healthy Colours" suite is quite different from the previous music made by the duo. Each of the four sections consist of repeated rhythm guitar patterns, a bouncy elementary synthesizer line and various tapeloops of speech all set to a primitive drum machine. This music is quite minimalistic and dry-sounding.
All together, "The Essential Fripp and Eno" covers the basics of what Robert Fripp and Brian Eno did as a musical force. Since they only released two albums together, I personally think that releasing this as a 2-disc set with "Healthy Colours" tacked onto the end would have been a better idea (The lenghty "Index of Metals" from "Evening Star" is an essential piece in my opinion). However, I have no complaints with the way this compilation is put together. The sound quality is stellar on this CD and so is the music. Here's hoping that Robert and Brian will reunite for something new real soon.

"The essential" is not an adequate anthology of the duo's mid-'70s collaborations, but it does manage to gather some of the better pieces of their output. I tend to agree with one of the prior reviewers who said that this album should be taken as an alternative to 1973's "No pussyfooting"; I think that "The essential" better should be labelled as "No pussyfooting (Remastered) + 6 bonus tracks". This compilation was released to coincide with Eno's mammoth box sets "Eno:Instrumental"(including a 7-minute edit of "An index of metals") and "Eno:Vocal" back in 1994, two three-disc sets which provide an excellent overview of Eno's entire career, so it's probably meant as an introduction for people who don't want to buy the individual albums of Eno and Fripp. "The essential" opens with the most complex track, the 21-minute "The heavenly..", a piece which introduces the then-innovative technique of tape loop manipulation. Although the sounds are quite static and not always particularly melodic, the hypnotic nature of the music and Fripp's long-stretched solo textures put this track over the top. The 18 1/2-minute "Swastika girls" is similar in approach, yet the guitar parts are more aggressive, sometimes shifting into discordant riffs and piercing feedback. As innovative and groundbreaking this sort of ambient music was, the fact still remains that these two aforementioned pieces have too few ideas for their length. If you have already listened to albums of '90s ambient artists like Main and Seefeel and to Fripp's/Eno's more recent work, you know what I mean. Nevertheless, the tracks which are taken from the duo's second outing, "Evening star", are still very listenable and show a refinement of the methods used on "No pussyfooting". The aptly titled "Wind on water" features warm background textures which are joined by glittering layers of treated guitar/synths, creating a baffling yet thoroughly compelling 'electronic listening' piece. The obvious stand-out cut on this disc is the 7 3/4-minute "Evening star", perhaps one of the greatest ambient/new age tracks ever made. The scene is carefully built up by Fripp's guitar sounds - rhythm guitar on the left stereo channel, three-note picking on the right one, and various feedback whines/drones between the two channels - before Eno adds some atmospheric synths and romantic piano lines. In complete contrast to this great track is the closing quartet of soundscapes, the previously unreleased "Healthy colours": Although this piece is divided into four parts, it smashes into your skull with more than 23 minutes of exactly the same thing - a muddy amalgam of swampy percussion (not dissimilar to that on the Eno/Lanois/Brook collaboration "Hybrid"), thin guitar chords, meandering bass drones, and vocal samples which are so childish that they become annoying very quickly. To my ears, it almost seems like self-parody. "Healthy colors" may have been palatable if Eno/Fripp had supported this piece with a melody or a hook every now and then, but it's so discordant and unmemorable that it must be considered as self-indulgent garbage. Apart from this grave misstep, I'd really recommend this album if you're interested in the roots of ambient/new age music.

This music is so brilliant and trippy you must have it . The first time I heard it on "Music for our Times" the DJ just sighed afterwards and said 'Why spoil the mood ?' and left a few respectful moments of dead air . Give it a listen , there's not much out there like it .

"The Essential Fripp & Eno" is a compilation of material from the 1970s collaborations between Robert Fripp and Brian Eno. It combines two tracks from each of their released albums-- "(No Pussyfooting)" and "Evening Star" with four unreleased tracks from a later session. Curiously enough, "(No Pussyfooting)" consisted of only two tracks, as such the entire album is replicated here.

The music of the albums is intriguing and pioneering-- based around Frippertronics, a system of tape looping developed by Eno that would allow a loop to play infinitely without decay. All of the material features loops in various contexts over which Fripp solos in fuzz tone. The performances by Fripp are inspired throughout, and the loops are rather varied, ranging from clean tone guitars to tamboura-like drones. At this point, ambient music was still forming as a notion in Eno's mind, as such the trappings of ambient are not entirely present on these albums.

The four tracks from later are the real draw for fans-- they're quite different from anything earlier-- punky guitar riffs and loping fretless bass mix with sampled vocals and simple (programmed?) beats. It's intriguing for several minutes, but it's so repetitive that I found it by and large frustrating to listen.

Nonetheless, there's quite a bit of value in this set, and the collaborations between Fripp and Eno are all critically important works in the development of ambient music. Recommended.

Like most good "best of" collections do, this cd tries to rope you in by offering you the "Healthy Colors" quartet.

The "essential" are the 2 lps they made, folks. They are on the market, so go get them. Now, should they decide to put everything, including the (I think) uninspiring "Healthy Colors", on one double disc, then I will change my tune.

It gets 3 stars from me because the tracks ARE essential listening (save the last 4), and out of respect for Fripp and Eno, but this shoddy way of trying to make a fastt buck gets negative stars in my book, and is uncalled for.

The first Fripp and Eno CD I heard was the recently released
"The Equatorial Stars," to which I give 5 fantastic stars.
By comparison, "The Essential Fripp and Eno" is less ambient
in that Fripp's guitar is more up front and just plain louder...
but every bit as brilliant. The first track, "The Heavenly Music
Corporation" is 21 minutes and (as the cliche goes) it alone is
worth the price of admission. The reason I titled this review "five tracks-five stars" is exactly this: the first five tracks
of this CD get five stars...but tracks 6, 7 and 8 have very
annoying vocals. So what I'd recommend is...program the first
five tracks of this CD, followed by the entire "The Equatorial
Stars" CD-------and you have a fantastic Fripp and Eno experience,
worthy of empowering any creative activity you are involved in
while the music plays.

All this seems to exist for is as a 'capsule' for the release of the "Healthy Colours" tracks, which really appear to be something more akin to a failed experiment in some of the methods which Eno would use more fruitfully with David Byrne, and which Fripp's solo works (viz "The League of Gentlemen") would employ to much better effect. The _real_ 'Essential Fripp and Eno' is actually the two original albums: "No Pussyfooting" and "Evening Star". Go there instead.

For the price of 1 disc, you get the best of No Pussyfooting and Evening Star. That would be ALL of the amazing No Pussyfooting and 2 priceless cuts from Evening Star. The rest of the latter is for completists only, imo (index of metals is one of the longest aural tortures I've ever sat through; you can clear your house of unwanted house-guests, human and otherwise by playing it, think harsh industrial ambient). And okay, the "new" tracks are a bit silly and maybe not so essential, but one can always pick a favorite of the 4 versions of Healthy Colours and ignore the rest, or ignore them all, they're just playful (while inevitably fripper-intense) throw-ins.

Highlight amongst many for me is the guitar as a violin on Evening Star -- No one has ever quite duplicated Fripp's tone and style as his overdriven notes flow with a passion and grace that simply transcend words. And the synth/keyboard paintings by Eno are divine; I always find myself sitting on a hillside staring into the night sky when the howl gently intrudes towards the end of the piece. I seem to remember Fripp touring solo post KC (70's version) mentioning this piece as being one that inspired members of the audience to make love... during the show! Now draw the blinds (or not) and get this disc! Or get both of the originals, but don't be surprised if your playlist looks just like it is here (sans colours).

The title is misleading, but not really false. This disc contains the entire album No Pussyfooting - long compositions composed of tape loops and Fripp guitar fed through all sorts of machines, deceptively repetitive, intelligently structured music that doesn't just wander or hypnotize the listener. So instead of running out to buy No Pussyfooting and Evening Star, buy this disc and Evening Star and you'll get the 4-segments of "Healthy Colours" as a freebie. They're placed at the end of this disc, after two Evening Star tracks, so if you don't like them you can just turn off the machine. Not a rip-off - on its own terms this is an excellent disc.