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Mojo FEBRUARY 2022 - by Mike Barnes

ROBERT FRIPP: MUSIC FOR QUIET MOMENTS

King Crimson guitarist's ambience in an 8-CD box.

During 2020, amid the weekly menu of Robert & Toyah's Sunday Lunch podcasts, Fripp offered the rather more digestible alternative of a download of one of his "soundscapes", recorded live between 2004 and 2009, in a year-long series. And now, all fifty-two are compiled here. Fripp's use of digital delays gives his treated guitar notes a rhythmic rise and fall, like breathing, and he uses this system to create slowly shifting, layered patterns. He occasionally cuts out of the process, playing some sweet, spangly lead lines, or underpins it with ominous low notes. This all tends towards a broad similarity, with the only dynamics emanating from the occasional eccentric loop. Given the quantity of soundscapes albums already available, one wonders who actually needs all this. But taken on its own terms, this is sensuous, immersive music that soothes and tweaks the imagination.