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Looper's Delight
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Okay, a bit wordy but I'll carve it down. Fripp's "Let the Power Fall" (1981): At the time this came out distribution of vinyl was weird, and inconsistent depending on how far outside a major metro area you lived. In New Jersey I had a little trouble at first finding RF's work, until this album came out. I found it on a whim scan of the 'F' section - during a time when one would hear comments from other people in line for shows (not RF, but Lou Reed and a Kitchen benefit) about "Frippertronics", and "Roscotronics". Shortly after this RF was written up in the NY Times for having achieved a major coup with three record companies, getting distribution for a number of releases; as such the effect to me was that "Let the Power Fall" was like the drop of water that broke the dam. Later it was easy to find releases like "Exposure", "The League of Gentlemen", and (to a much, much lesser extent) "Sacred Songs". In the process RF wrote some stunning articles about what he was "doing" with all this. It all had the effect of a great coming-together of forces, at the behest of a singular powerful creative force. And an example for us all. To one who had been following RF and Eno's collaborations since "No Pussyfooting" (let alone just the articles coming from Keyboard, Musician, and Guitar Player at the time) knew, LTPF presented a natural though minimalistic evolution of the process first used by RF, now termed "Frippertronics". The pieces are built in front of the listener, a pattern constructed for the most part without solos on top, and by listening to the patterns I grew to feel as if RF were presenting examples to unseen students. This seemed in the spirit of the diagram on the back of Eno's "Discreet Music": as if to say, "Here's how it's done. Now go off and work with this." While the method had been used before DM by other people, DM illustrated the process on the back of the album cover. It was made into an easily-obtainable thing (so long as you had two reel-to-reel tape decks, a long reel of tape, a compressor, and a stable surface to put it on) in comparison to what had formerly just been "experimental music". When RF called what he was doing "Frippertronics" he simply BRANDED the process. What made it "Frippertronics" was the ingredient of RF. This meant in a way that, should I do the same thing, I could call it "Spudtronics" (and I have at times, though privately). The works are titled in sequence, by years. In some ways this titling causes a detaching between title and song content, not uncommon to art, but at the time considered dangerous (or even subversive!) if not bad marketing by the Big Five. As a result however, the listener is freed to attach whatever meaning one likes to the pieces. Does "1984" remind you of a time when you listened to LTPF in 1984? So be it, implies RF. Great art often invites such participation. In LTPF, we are given precise sketches based upon a simple blueprint, and invited to do so ourselves. And, as Loopers Delight would strongly indicate, so we have.