Robert Fripp - "November Suite: 1996 Soundscapes - Live at Green Park Station"

When Robert Fripp is away from King Crimson, truly magical things come from his guitar. In a solo context, Fripp presents Soundscapes, built on the tradition of Frippertronics, a mode of musical expression he pioneered with Brian Eno over the course of two albums in the 1970s, No Pussyfooting and Evening Star. Those early albums relied on actual physical loops of tape, adding new elements with each repetition. Such limitations no longer exist. Working here in the realm of one guitar, and many, many effects processors, Fripp produces tones and textures that one would not assume are coming from a guitar at all. In 1996, Fripp was invited to play in a converted railway station in Bath, England. For three hours he graced passers-by with his most easily classified as contemporary space music (such as is heard on the Hearts of Space radio show), deprecatingly described by Fripp as "bleeping and droning." In fact, its in the middle of these. A very gentle, almost ambient atmosphere slowly takes over any room that the album is playing in. Closer listening is rewarded -- there is a lot happening on a very slow schedule, similar to Eno's Thursday Afternoon album. This is a precis of the entire three-hour program that was presented, edited to include every note played, but not every repetition of the note, much like the early-'90s version of Philip Glass' Einstein on the Beach. This is definitely a release for fans of the guitarist, and for fans of space music in general.

4 stars