Though Robert Fripp’s name will be forever associated with the bloated titan of prog-rock, King Crimson, his most fruitful work was arguably done in a series of collaborations with everyone’s favorite electro-whiz, Brian Eno. Fripp & Eno released a few alums in the early 70s that paired Fripp’s laser beam guitar melodies with Eno’s penchant for quite reflection and treated pianos to mixed results. The records weren’t terrible, far from it, but inconsistency was the name of the game with Eno’s contributions feeling a bit color-by-numbers and never living up to the massive potential Fripp’s playing brought to the table. But this meeting wasn’t a total wash; the sessions gave birth to what was later dubbed “Frippertronics,” a system of reel-to-reel tape recorders that Fripp used to weave guitar lines into dense webs of sound. With this setup, Fripp was able craft improvised ambient experiments in real time and finally give full voice to the ideas only hinted at in his previous works. So without further ado, here is the man himself, live from October 1979, with a remarkable performance showing how powerful only a guitar and tape recorder can be in the hands of a genius.
1979: Frippertronics 101
