Music Arcades: Fripp and Eno: Evening Star

I gave myself a few days' run up to this, and I'm glad I did, because it needed several listens — all from my vinyl copy, as Fripp refuses to accept the licensing terms currently on offer from the download and streaming services.

I listened with and without headphones. Wind on Water definitely sounds better without: it makes the whole room feel like a cistern gradually filling up with sound. This review notes the extremely long fade-in on the track, and it may just be that, but I had the sense of something else going on as well, an increasing density as the surface waves I imagined sloshed to and fro between the cistern walls. I know this kind of visualisation is trite, and a bit naff, but it still helps sometimes. The other day I found myself enjoying the title track from Eno's Another Green World (which I believe has Fripp on guitar) much more when it was soundtracking the smoke from the bushfires around Los Angeles — discovered via City of Sound:

The title track to Evening Star segues from Wind on Water. A couple of years ago, Fripp personally oversaw the remastering of a new CD version of this album, in a studio very near where our friend Helen lives. (This was at the same time as the revisited (No Pussyfooting), which featured here a month ago, though the new Evening Star has no half-speed or backwards versions.) On hearing this track again, he records in his diary:

This is stunning; the main theme is one of the most gorgeous guitar statements I have ever heard, played through a little Fender Champ. . It is what, today, I recognise as a being melody.

The second sentence is characteristically gnomic, and beyond commentary, but the first one I can agree with wholeheartedly. I also agree with his endorsement of the wonderful Sandy Park Inn (they keep their Otter beers very well).

I admit I didn't like the side-long Index of Metals much at first. I still don't, but I found this review, which has a number of very wise things to say about the album in general, so I revisited Index when I read the case that the review makes for it. The reviewer, Lord Lucan (sic), draws a comparison with Tangerine Dream's Zeit, and I'd go along with that, and maybe chip in early Klaus Schulze and Conrad Schnitzler. For me, though, those comparisons are ambivalent. "Demonically sinister", "totally dissonant", "slow motion horror movie", "bad trip of epic proportions", "ambient with an irritant", "the soundtrack to your own creeping dread" — these are just some of the terms of Lucan's praise, before he concludes, "Writing about it hasn't really made me any the wiser, but it is a piece of music I find strangely compelling…a class A head-fuck." Maybe that's got something to do with why my head's been so fucking miserable these past few days.

Lovely cover, though — changing the subject quickly. I'm so used to seeing it postage-stamp size on a screen, that I'd forgotten the impact it has 12 inches square. The painting is by Eno's late friend Peter Schmidt, who, like Tom Phillips, lived within walking distance of here. When I bought some Phillips prints from my local dealer, he managed to cross-sell me Schmidt's Cycloid VI, which now hangs above my desk.