Re: Frippertronics and soundscapes

[Andre LaFosse <altruist@earthlink.net>]

Hi Terry,

Terry Blankenship wrote:
> 
> I just checked Fripp's discography. I haven't listened
> to any of his work since 1988. I noticed that he had a
> lot of solo albums with frippertronics and
> soundscapes. Have any of you heard any of his more
> recent soundscape CDs and what did you think?

What I think is that Robert's more recent soundscapes work, while much
more technologically involved than the old reel-to-reel tape loop
system, is still coming largely from the "long delay paradigm."  So now
he's using multiple TC electronics delays instead of Revox tape decks,
and guitar synths and Eventide processors instead of a 1970's
pedalboard...  but the overall concept of looping that he's using, to my
ears, is still based in the ambient tape loop/long delay school of
thought that he was working with thirty years ago (which in turn was
taken pretty directly from the Terry Riley/Tape Music Center concept
from several years before that).

I like a lot of Robert's stuff, and he was certainly a factor in my
taking an interest in looping in the first place.  But I also think that
his popularity in the guitar-loop realm has been a double-edged sword,
in the sense that a lot of people have assumed that whatever Robert is
doing represents the be-all end-all apex of what's aesthetically,
stylistically, or technologically possible with real-time looping.

I honestly think this has held back a lot of player's imaginations,
because using something like an Echoplex or a Repeater to substitute for
a Revox tape deck or a long delay is sort of like using a G4 Macintosh
computer just for word processing and playing Tetris.  There's nothing
WRONG with that, and if that's what you want to do, go right ahead.  But
it's important to know what else is possible, both technically and
aesthetically, beyond what one might be used to expecting.

There are a lot of paradigms beyond the minimalist and ambient schools
that looping has crept into over the last thirty years since the first
Fripp and Eno record, and a lot of players whose use of looping is in no
way indebted to Robert's style of playing.  Certainly, if ambient or
minimalism is your thing, you can still do that with looping, probably
now better than ever.  

But there's an awful lot of other possibilities with looping being done
now, and waiting to be done, that was unthinkable thirty years ago, and
that Fripp hasn't even remotely touched on in his own work.  And that,
personally, is infinitely more intriguing to me.

Geoff Smith recently web-published a rather controversial (but very
in-depth) history of looping here:

http://livelooping.com/researchpaper/index.htm

I think his chapter on Fripp and Eno, and his assessment of their
impact, is very on target, and puts their work into an appropriate
context with regards to what came before and after.

Anyway...

--Andre LaFosse
The Echoplex Analysis Pages:
http://www.altruistmusic.com/EDP