Customer Reviews

Evening Star

5 star:		(34)
4 star:		(3)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(3)

 

 

This is a work of sheer beauty. The title track is magnificant pastoral of a simple piano progression and Fripp's soaring guitar and is worth the price of admission. The 'second side' is the abstract 'Index of Metals' 20-odd minutes of layered guitar and synth loops under some of the most beautiful axe-work Mr. Fripp has unleashed. The soon-to-be-dubbed "Frippertronics" technique is shown here in all of it's glory, tape saturation and decay...missing in the digital technique adds texture and timbre. No, this is NOT for everybody, but try a taste....it could become one of your favorite albums (as it is mine)

"Wind on Water/Evening Star" is one of the coolest pieces either of these musicians have ever collaborated on. On the first track it sounds like Eno looped Fripp's sparse pentatonic melodies and trills dozens of times, processing each in a different way to create an edifice that beckons the listener in...Then the clusters of sound are stripped away, revealing further "rooms" within (just like the title--"Wind on Water" is the English translation of Feng Shui, the ancient Chinese art of design). It and the following title piece are alone worth the price of this CD..."Wind on Wind" is an excerpt from "Discreet Music," Eno's 1974 ambient release. "An Index of Metals" begins with a dissonant, dial-tone like chord which gradually changes into a monstrous proto-industrial soundscape.

I've always been an agnostic when it comes to remastered versions of classic albums. However, this brilliant album was remastered by Robert Fripp himself, along with Simon Heyworth. As a result, the integrity of the music is maintained while the quality of the recording stands head and shoulders above the remastering attempts of others.

"Wind on Water," which originally sounded more or less like solid chords, is revealed as an intricate network of looped sounds. "Evensong" likewise is exposed as having much greater depth than I ever suspected. As for "Evening Star," a piece of music so beautiful it seems as though it simply dropped out of heaven, it's even richer.

However, it is "An Index of Metals" that stands as a testament to the skill of Fripp and Heyworth. I've listened to this piece hundreds of times, and it never sounded like this. The depth, the clarity, and the dynamics that are present in this remastering are unparalleled in any remastered CD I've ever heard.

If you love this album, throw out your 1990 version and buy this one today.

While all Eno collaborations are amazing and have added and enriched the lives of all who made it and listen to it, for me, Eno's lps with Robert Fripp, and those with Cluster, are the most amazing that he made.

"Evening Star," Eno's 2nd and final (alas) lp made with Fripp, foreshadow Eno's ambient works to come, as it appears that Fripp was second fiddle on these reocrdings, adding his sinewy guitar as needed, and doing little else. Age and wisdom, of course, tell us that Fripp was much more involved than that, despite his sparse playing of his guitar.

Whatever the case, "An Index of Metals" is quite possibly the most astounding piece of music in all of Eno's amazingly desperse canon, foreshadowing not only his pure ambient pieces, but the forthcoming industrial movement, as well, with his tape loops and prepared use of Fripp's guitar. An astounding number, to be sure- bleak, sparse, yet emotional and full of life.

This lp has it all for fans of early textured ambient works, and is a must own.

The year is 2001. Fans like me are listening to U2 and King Crimson and are saying. Yeah! I like that music. In 1975 I was "discovering" Fripp and Eno in their own right. They both have influenced numerous bands over the years. They both have produced many fine albums with their own names on them.

When I listen to "Evening Star", I realize that they already had "it" figured out in 1975. New albums like "Construction of Light" and various "Projekcts" by Fripp and cohorts have been described as "setting the stage for music in the next 20 years". Well, albums like "Evening Star" set the stage for the past 20 years. Many of the techniques used in the new albums are there in "Evening Star". These guys never cease to amaze me. I do not mean to downplay the new works by these two pioneers, but when you realize that we now have digital this and digital that; it makes their early work all the more amazing. This album contains some of the best ambient music available. The title track is a landmark in the genre. Anybody who likes ambient music, electronic trickery, and plain good music should listen to several works by Fripp and Eno (together and by themselves and producing and playing with other people). Whenever they play with other people, they can't help but rub off on them. This is one of their best.

This is a very difficult cd to find at present, and i was fortunate enough to get it for a reasonable price. I started looking for it after i found out that the beautiful song i'd been listening to on a friend's unlabeled mixed cd was the title track to Evening Star. The opening track (Wind on Water) is a very strangely crafted piece of music. It almost never establishes a "tonic" or resolving note, yet the whole thing sounds like home. The guitar work in it hardly sounds like a guitar, and is mixed very well with the synth in the back. the piece sounds like you're watching something naturally epic happening, like cells going through mitosis.
The title track, which is still my favorite, is probably the most visionary and picture-painting track on the cd. i don't like the word soundscape because it's so cliche and abused. robert fripp really shines on this piece, and makes his guitar expressive of things that most guitar players find great difficulty in bringing to life. the beautiful thing about this song, and really the whole album, is how *subtle* it all is. it never hits you in the face like a rock song, no matter how loud you turn it up. the whole thing plays through like a soundtrack to something wonderful happening under a microscope, or through a telescope. either way, it's very cosmic.
the only thing i'd criticize is the last track, "An Index of Metals." if you're familiar with King Crimson (Fripp's band), you'll know what i mean by this. like a handful of Crimson pieces, it takes a while to get started, with what seems like several minutes of near-silence at the beginning, and then pretty much sits back and enjoys a half hour of disturbing noise and dark ambience. it's a contrast, as the rest of the album is very light and relaxing. It's reminiscent of Crimson's "The Mincer," or "Starless and Bible Black" on the Starless and Bible Black album, so if you can dig it, then it's pretty intense.
Overall, i'd highly recommend the album, and hopefully they'll re-release it soon so everyone can listen to it without paying 40 dollars for the cd. If you're looking for truely "ambient" music (meaning not pumped up dance beats with spacey music in the back, but really atmospheric stuff), then you'll probably be more than satisfied with it. on the other hand, it might not be fully appreciated by someone who expects something much more defined and typical of a newer generation, like house music or techno-ambient stuff like Orbital.

Albums this beautiful don't happen often. Nope. This is the second outing by Brian Eno and Robert Fripp, and it's the best. From the opening growing harmonic washes, through the romanticism of the title track, a couple of other pretty Satie-like short sketches, then into the jagged, bleak rapture of "An Index of Metals", this one comes about as close as one gets to a perfect listening experience, I feel. Eno's manipulation and tinkering with Fripp's guitar at one moment yields repeating chime-like structures, and the next a surging, swirling cascade of chordal tones. And Fripp's playing, with its cello-like tones, is full of both beauty and drama, especially on the title and "An Index...". Destroys the notion that pop music and/or rock has no need of virtuosity. Ownership of this should be required by law. No foolin'!

This album, as well as No Pussyfooting had a profound influence on me. True, I was still a soft-skull at age 16 when I first heard it. However, I can remember saying to myself, "This is what a guitar can sound like?". Where do I begin?

I will say this music is not for people who have low attention spans. If you fall into that category, this album will be way to static and you might find watching paint dry more interesting.

That said, if you like resonant harmonics and lovely melodies and can find beauty in tone clusters, I highly recommend this classic.

"Evening Star" is a profoundly different record than "No Pussyfooting"; mostly gentle, more familiar, more naïve and approachable and still valuable for "An Index Of Metals" (oi! why cap the preposition?). The four loopy pieces that comprised the original side one offer an exemplary demonstration of Eno's early adherence to his ideals of dilettantism, here elevated and made exceptional by Fripp's virtuosic taste, timing and play.

But the importance and crux of Evening Star remains the less pretty, more profound half-hour that is occupied by "An Index Of Metals". The piece demonstrates a singular, uncanny and successful hybridization of the usually locked timbral stillness of looped constructs with a genuinely compelling and suite-like structure - let's say "deliberate" instead of purely "self-deterministic" - built upon recognizable themes and restatement. It also manages to immediately and happily dilute the meaning of "ambient" by playing into foregrounds and backgrounds, inviting active listening. This degree of working-out has not been heard on Fripp and Eno pieces before or since, and one suspects that "Index" in particular belongs much more to Fripp than to Eno. Pun or not, "Index" is now indexed to allow direct access to its 6 distinct "movements", a level of functionality that's nice, but not necessary since the piece is best heard as a whole. Broken up, it takes on an air of disappointment not unlike the experience of listening to those edited versions of "Starless" that keep turning up on King Crimson compilations. It's a coherent piece of music people, listen to it!

As for the remastering, there is a less dramatic improvement here when compared with recent CD editions, and the dramatic improvements heard on the remaster of "No Pussyfooting", but more than enough to justify its 21st century remanufacture. If you're deciding between either of the NP or ES reissues and the more recent "Beyond Even", the winner is either the NP or ES reissues.

When the apparent mix up is cleared up and the real Evening Star disc is available, don't hesitate - it is one of the most original and beautiful albums ever made, in my opinion. The title piece is like nothing I've ever heard anywhere else, a gorgeous piece built on the striking contrast between soft piano riffs and light synthesizer tones in the background and Fripp's heavily distorted guitar playing sweeping melodies over the whole fretboard in the foreground. The other pieces on side one are short ambient pieces, also very beautiful but without the melodic interest of Evening Star. Side two is devoted to a single ambient/industrial piece, An Index of Metals, that uses tape loops of sounds that evoke machinery and bleak industrial landscapes. It's also very beautiful, but much more dark than the cuts on side one, and ranks as one of the most sonically interesting ambient pieces I've heard.