(No Pussyfooting) (studio album) by Fripp & Eno

From Jboy56 05/22/2023 13:11

Pretty much kinda dull in the long run. Relistenablity is quite low

From teague 07/07/2021 23:10

What a wonderful venture into the world of drone and ambient music. The sounds are dense and so is the music. It's like Robert Fripp and Brian Eno were born to collaborate together.

From OldToad 04/14/2021 01:11

I just really, really like Fripp's tone on guitar when you crank this thing up pretty loud.

~retired album note recorded for archival purposes because I hate my future kids already~

"I'd like to say this album was the beginning of something but I'm not entirely sure what. Arguably it was the first excursion of "Frippertronics" but I'm not sure even Robert Fripp knows exactly what that implies (seeing as Fripp & Eno's tape loop experiments did seem to take on different forms here, on Evening Star, and then a bit on Discreet Music). Beyond the experimentation and the fact that the album sounds almost as cool in reverse (seriously try it), there's something here beneath the strangely emotive guitar layering within Fripp/Eno's drones that strikes me as (despite being endlessly minimal in its composition), as being more emotionality affecting than anything else by either of these two masters of their craft. At first glance it seems like there's not much to either piece here, but what there is is astounding.

"Heavenly Music Corporation" opens with layers of delicate guitar and synch that slowly collect on top of each other like water collecting in the crevices on the pavement: they just sort of gather there and before you even realize what's happening the sidewalk is suddenly flooded. This layering continues and evolves for a bit until Fripp comes in the litter the thing with enough feeback to dilute the whole of the piece to its ending, and just as you're processing what went down, Swastika Girls" begins, which takes the electronic manipulation we've heard up to this point and brings it somewhere totally beyond where it should theoretically even work. There's less outright structure here, and more and more of these layers going over each other not so much in the delicate fashion that characterizes the previous track, but in something more akin to meticulous chaos, whereby Fripp and Eno press all these layers into one dense space and let the resultant alternating of dissonance and melody go where it will.

So I'm sure something began here, and to be certain little bits of that "something" can be found elsewhere, particularly in Eno and Fripp's respective later work, but it's a something that, despite being of common musical trends, (Drones, ambient with melody, layered guitar, and of course the oft-imitated "Frippertronics") exhibits those trends put together here in a way very seeming totally unlikely but that makes all too much sense. Something uniquely Fripp & Eno."