Music Arcades: Various: Sometimes God Hides - The Young Person's Guide to Discipline

I always liked the title of this album, but it was several years until I realised where it originated, in Alan Watts' title, where there's a story about God playing hide and seek with himself. Here's the full story. I recommend it.

I used to keep this CD in the office in the Workstation: the broken jewel case tells that tale. It was an unsympathetic environment for music. I'd play the 79 minutes of the CD all the way through, barely listening unless something surprising came along.

Some compilations work as a coherent whole (one example), but this one doesn't, for me. It functions just as a sampler brochure for the Discipline label. It sounds like the compilers tried to spread the tracks touched by the hand-of-Fripp, but, like a rocky outcrop that defies the most careful and rigorous landscaping, the biggest determinant of the feel of almost every track seems to be his presence or absence. The one time that consideration fell into the background was during Peter Hammill's a cappella A Better Time. I came to love that track in the office ten or more years ago, and I think I included it on a mini-disc compilation I made around that time. I'm less convinced now, but it sounds good coming out of big speakers, much better than those I had in the office.