**** Robert FrippA BLESSING OF TEARS: 1995 SOUNDSCAPES, VOL. 2, LIVE IN
CALIFORNIA
(Discipline Global Mobile)
On his own, guitarist Robert Fripp
has a genius for not only improvising melodies but stitching them with
fine-detailed spider's webs of rhythm and harmonic lines to make modern ambient
music equaled in gracious beauty only by his sometime collaborator
Brian Eno.
Here that genius is exercised to its fullest and most passionate. On this
recording, an elegy for his charming mother, Edith (whom I once had the
pleasure of meeting on a trip to Cranborne, in Dorset, England),
Fripp is
working with a lighter palette than on his previous solo guitar albums, one
dappled with melancholy and joy and hope. At times, his colors are so subtle
they're nearly transparent -- spirits passing through the realm of sound. And
if that seems too awkwardly poetic, rest assured the music is far more literate
and evocative than my description could ever be. (Order by mail from
Possible Productions,
351 Magnolia Avenue, Long Beach CA 90802.)
-- Ted Drozdowski
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