And yet, YET, Robert and I both felt something was missing from these recordings. With the results of Keeling's work with Metropole, as Singleton indicates in his liner note contribution to The Wine of Silence, "it seemed the journey was complete. Instead, for what was being called Orchscapes, Keeling added his own compositional input to the process, lending additional form to Fripp's work that began drawing, with its slow-moving repetition and lush textures, comparisons to the Tintinnabulum of celebrated Estonian composer Arvo Pärt and the similarly gentle movement of Gavin Bryars.īut that wasn't enough. Keeling did more, however, than shape and score the musicmuch of its source material culled from The Gates of Paradise (DGM Live, 1994) and That Which Passes (DGM Live, 1995), as well as unreleased Soundscapes including performances by Fripp at the World Trade Center in New York Cityfor the near-60-piece Metropole and, on two tracks ("Requiescat" and "Miserere"), the 28-piece New Music Choir. Still, this is the first time a project of this scope has been undertaken. The Wine of Silence isn't the first time experiments in tape or digital looping have been scored and interpreted by classical musiciansthat honor goes, amongst others, to American chamber ensemble Bang on a Can, which took Eno's seminal ambient recording, Ambient One: Music for Airports (Astralwerks, 1978), and scored it for cello, clarinet, keyboards, guitar, piano, percussion and bass on Music for Airports Live (Cantaloupe, 2008).
The idea? To take Fripp's Soundscapes, which were improvisations that became, through looping and other devices, de facto compositions, and score them for a "real" orchestra. Enter Andrew Keeling a few years later, a longtime Crimhead who also happened to be an accomplished classical composer and orchestrator, along with Gert-Jan Blom of the Metropole Orkest, the Dutch orchestra which, despite being threatened with extinction by a near-sighted political party in recent times, remains the world's most far-reaching classical orchestra, collaborating with everyone from drummer Terry Bozzio to guitarists Mike Keneally and, most un-coincidentally, Crimson alum Adrian Belew. Early on in the evolution of Soundscapes, Fripp and longtime recording/mixing engineer and occasional co-producer David Singleton realized that, while Fripp's remarkable work was orchestral in nature, it wasn't truly orchestral in scope it was still one man, one guitar and a whack of technology. But as the emergence of digital technology and sampling morphed Frippertronics into Soundscapes, Fripp never deserted the concept of one man, one guitar and a whack of technology creating a true real-time orchestra-like entity on solo efforts including Love Cannot Bear> (DGM Live, 2005) and At the End of Time (DGM Live, 2007).īut a strange thing happened along the way.
He began touring with fellow sonic explorer Brian Eno in support of their groundbreakers No Pussyfooting (DGM Live, 1973) and Evening Star (DGM Live, 1975), where Fripp's spontaneous improvisations were looped between two Revox tape recorders to create an approach to real-time layering and two-person orchestration called Frippertronics.Ĭiting a preference for the "small, intelligent, mobile unit," Fripp continued on with solo Frippertronics tours, but soon found himself back in the world of rock when Crimson reformed in 1980 (happily, for most Crimheads) for Discipline (DGM Live, 1981). After helping to define symphonic prog with King Crimson and the seminal In the Court of the Crimson King (DGM Live, 1969)mellotrons screaming instead of a real orchestras swirlingthe rigors of the road, and keeping a band together, caused co-founder/guitarist Robert Fripp to desert such problems entirely by 1975.
RADIO SILENCE WINE FULL
It's strange how things sometimes come around full circle.well, almost.
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