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Fripp & Eno / Fripp & Eno - The Equatorial Stars |
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Fripp & Eno - The Equatorial Stars
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BRIAN ENO COMMENTS ON 'THE EQUATORIAL STARS':
It didn’t start well. Somehow my shoe nudged the little red button on the little black box with the little green lights. That button told the little box to tell the digital recorder that we would be recording in a manner far too tedious to explain when in fact we intended to record quite differently, in a manner also far too tedious to explain.
Unaware of the error of my shoe, and thus, one could say, carefree, we launched into playing, assuming that our efforts were being efficiently and uncomplainingly recorded bit by bit and byte by byte in the correct manner which is far too tedious to explain rather than, as happened to be the case, in the incorrect manner which is also far too tedious to explain.
The nature of the issue, not to be unnecessarily obscure, has to do with digital encoding standards. I promise I shall never again mention those words in our few brief moments together.
That first performance was unlike anything we’d ever heard before. All over Heaven, angels must have been turning green with envy and grey with worry that they might soon lose their jobs. And devils must have been weeping and gnashing their teeth and preparing to negotiate for our souls, souls big enough and dark enough to have made music like this. But listening back to what we expected to be nothing short of a singular masterwork, we heard instead nothing. To be perfectly honest it was not exactly nothing. It was a little bit more than nothing and therefore possibly worse than nothing. If you took a large sheet of metal and randomly sprayed it with a Kalashnikov or similar semi-automatic urban assault weapon, the sound would be close to what we heard. And if you now took that randomly perforated metal sheet and hung it over, let’s say, Van Gogh’s ‘Night Sky at Arles”, and then tried to look at the painting through the holes, you could achieve a visual experience analogous to the musical experience that we now had.
This episode – all caused by a shoe, one of a pair (I am bipedal) that I had bought in Holland not five days earlier and which had unfamiliarly long pointy toes - rather took the wind out of our sales figures and we never quite returned to form that day, despite recording over 2 hours worth of bits and bytes – probably reaching into the tens of gigabytes before we retired, shoulders slumped, another day older etc., from the oven-like conditions of my recording studio. Robert returned to his idyllic and relatively undigitized life which involves a great deal of commuting between Nashville Tennessee and Bredonborough, Dorset, whereas, over the subsequent weeks I dragged the screaming tape out of its dank dungeon and cruelly interrogated it….. stretching, squeezing, shredding, teasing, mashing, gnashing, splashing, trashing, looping, grouping, cutting, gouging, still unable to believe that it had no secrets to yield. It had none.
Our next meeting was blessed with fairer weather. It was a Thursday.
Brian Eno is currently at work in his studio on his forthcoming song album, tentatively called “Brian Eno: The Love Collection”.
1 MEISSA 8:08
2 LYRA 7:45
3 TARAZED 5:03
4 LUPUS 5:09
5 ANKAA 7:01
6 ALTAIR 5:11
7 TEREBELLUM 9:40
All music performed and composed by Brian Eno and Robert Fripp
Produced by Brian Eno
Technical assistance - Marlon Weyeneth
Administration - David Singleton, Jane Geerts and Catherine Dempsey
Design and layout - Hugh O'Donnell
Photo - Marlon Weyeneth
Cover design - Brian Eno
Average Rating: (From 15 Reviews):
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The Perfect Combination
From Andrew Mather of LANCASHIRE, England on .
I was a champion of THMC from (No Pussyfooting) when it was first released on the fittingly named HELP label. Despite everything ever released by either Fripp or Eno what these two people release into the musical library of sound as a collaborative effort, for me, is always magical and totally worthwhile. Its always significant, unexpected and infuriatingly occasional, when Fripp & Eno work however angels listen, attend and probably take part. Fantastic.
Gotta admit - it's leaving me a bit cold
From Frenchie_King of Atlanta, Georgia on .
I was indeed one of the seemingly million who couldn't wait to wrap his/her ears around a new (can it possibly be?) Fripp and Eno "masterwork". I guess we should know by now to "expect nothing" (where have I seen that slogan before?) because darn-near "next to nothing" is about what we get. Not that this CD is bad, it's just, well, plain. I've listened to it a lot, believe me. I'm not really saying that the artists are "going thru the motions" (trite phrases need not pop up here), but a little more "chutzpah" in the performance would've gotten my dander up more. A missed opportunity? Nonsense. Just a slight detour from the "what was and should have been expected".
actually, three and a half stars
From doug of sydney, Australia on .
cloudy, thunderous, chunky. i like it.
I liked it & so did Moose
From Alec Degrabbertitz of Toronto, Ontario on .
Moose was bitten by a dog, so I brought this album over and we relaxed to it. He talked about the Argos a lot, but I think he was secretly grooving to the music.
Edifying stuff
From Peter Wilson of LANCASHIRE, England on .
Wonderful concept. Beautiful to listen to while pondering how these stars were chosen to be immortalised on this album. Some are faint insignificant starts, another a mighty type ‘O’ giant so rare, some titles are, in fact, constellations … Does the music echo the star? Drift away and find out. More please.
Leaves Me Cold
From Joseph McFarland of Manassas, Virginia on .
I am a fan of the first two Fripp/Eno records. And I see the lineage from there to here. But this approach, which was once mobile and intelligent, has become dated. The music doesn't move me.
It's too static and too abstract to provoke any interest, IMO. Which is a complaint I have with some of Eno's recent work that I've heard - "The Drop" being an instance that to me is a complete letdown.
The most interesting track here if you ask me is "Meissa" which is spacey and glistening in a pleasant way. The other tracks tend towards nothingness. Brain Eno's "On Land" now seems like a commercial endeavor compared to the even less structured or friendly soundscapes he has been creating.
Negative, sorry...
From Chris Tsanakas of Athens, Greece on .
Nothing like the 2 originals, compared in intuition, in electronic esthetics or -this is the most crucial- in the feeling. Why is so uninteresting abstract? Why Fripp's soul (and solo) are so hidden (and cryptic in mood)? I felt nothing. I was in nowhere. I forgot where I was hearing Swastika Girls or anything else from Fripp&Eno's phycological (not so logical) paleta.
Sorry...
Chris Tsanakas
tsanakas@liberis.com
Delicate Screaming
From Mark Berton of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania on .
This collaborative revisit is something I've been waiting for since I was 15 years old. The genius behind these soundscapes is astonishing. As someone who has listened to all of the Fripp soundscapes, it is remarkable that he can take a note, spin and weave it and set it ablaze in so many different ways, leading up to such a collossal blanket of sound, and still be able to convey the emotion that he is feeling. While some may regard the soundscapes as experimental, it appears that Mr. Fripp has perfected the elixir.
Equatorial Stars - shimmering like gossamer
From Michel Champagne of New Orleans, Louisiana on .
In a word, glorious! A wonderful conceptual melding of the practical aspects of RF's(relatively) recent digital Soundscapes methodology and the analogue 'heart' of (NO PUSSYFOOTING) and Evening Star. Said 'early' F&E output filled my days as a teenager nearly thirty years ago and led to more than a few askew stares from my contemporaries (e.g. "Man, what is HE smoking?!")
And now this . . . Wonderful. Simply wonderful.
Thank you both, Robert and Brian, for letting the music play you once again . . . and then sharing it with the rest of us!
Fistfuls of Ether - this will change you.
From pcpaki of Aurora, Colorado on .
Dawn, a nascent blue,
as Nature holds long her gaze.
"Look directly into my Mystery,
tiny innocents".
Static & Evolving.
Reflections, like winter, cycle and call.
Cold frozen heart,
You beat the pulse.
I reach out to touch,
never to hold.
Only to Be.
Star-Gazing?
From Ed Brickell of Dallas, Texas on .
When I first read Brian Eno's bleak description of his most recent recording session with Robert Fripp, it seemed to confirm my worst fears for their third project after many years: somehow, in true "superstar reunion" fashion, they had managed to screw up everything.
The result released to the public, however, is hauntingly sublime: "The Equatorial Stars" is not only prime Fripp-Eno, but quite simply one of the best releases in recent years. As always with the best work of both of these highly talented musicians, the simplest musical cells slowly transform, mutate, and grow into compositions that, while initially sounding somewhat abstract, begin to take on an emotional cohesion and life of their own with repeated listenings. And yes, you will listen repeatedly -- at first not sure exactly why the damn thing won't leave your player, but finally succumbing to the fact that it has quietly sneaked its way into your daily life. Eno's masterful and understated electronic soundscapes provide the ideal interactive backdrop for Fripp's improvisational musings on guitar -- which at times remind me of Bach's cello suites, for some reason.
Quietly disturbing and engaging, and quite impossible to forget once the disc has stopped spinning ... which it hasn't at my house for very long.
Well bless my little cotton socks! It's F&E3!
From Owen Keenan of Junee, Australia on .
Short music, for tall people.
The Slightly Abnormal Persons Guide to F&E III
From Kram Namloc of LA, California on .
My Official Review of the Equatorial Stars by Fripp & Eno.
By Kram Namloc
I will endeavor to uncover some aspects of the Equatorial Stars that your sane human being would never comprehend or contemplate.
Firstly, Eno has again captured the deep, empty rumblings of Silent Eternity as he did on Apollo. The feeling of deep and everlasting horror at being cast adrift into the infinite nothingness of space is felt here. No one talks about it, but space is terrifying! This rumbling opens the CD with a delicate Fripp twerning betwixt the asteroids, giving a sense of life where there is infinite nothingness on the track Meissa.
In Lyra, we have gone to another solar system orbiting around a dark star where the beauty of Fripp's delicate understated playing floats among the vermilion lilly pods bobbing nearby. Lonely and lovely, sensual and sad.
Tarazed: More serene, delicate beauty from Fripp, almost meditative. Subtle undulating otherworldly bass undertones from Eno. Silence is their friend, no silence is their lover.
Lupus starts with a hearbeat-like beat, pulsating as heartbeat-like beats do. The man in the alien environment, he watches in awe. The spires of sound that Eno launches or is that Fripp, I think it's Fripp; swirling icy metallic crystals strafe the human's frail craft. A journey into the unknown, will this journey be his last? The heartbeat stops.
Ankaa: the thundering rumble of infinity emerges again, reverberating as Kcosmonaut Fripp spacewalks over the top and through the ever changing black holes and soaring meteors. Solar winds blow by. There is calm in hopeless infinity.
Altair: there is a rhythm to the stars and their spheres, it's called the Eternal Funk! When these two get together they cannot resist the funk! The funk will get you even on Pluto. I could do with an album of the rhythm and funk of Beatmaster Brian and Rhymin'' Robert. There is funk in outer space!
The longest track on ES is the closer: Terrebellum. A dense deep drone builds, the rumbling of eternity threatens to burst our eardrums. Tension builds. About three minutes in, Fripp soars on the ethers of infinity as Eno's rumble rolls underneath. The tension continues to build. Around five minutes in the aliens speak in shrill tones, echoing over the growing, almost angry rumble. Other forlorn voices join in, at home in the darkness, they fade away and leave us alone in the vastness.
This is another space album from Eno and it is a great one. Apollo came to mind often, on first listen. These two players merge so well that it's often hard to tell when Eno starts and Fripp stops. They should dock their spacecraft together more often. The Equatorial Stars has a lot of subtlety that some may lack the ability to appreciate.
4.5 Equatorial Stars!
Fripp and Eno Together Again!!!
From Louie Bourland of Garden Grove, California on .
King Crimson founder Robert Fripp and Ambient music pioneer Brian Eno have joined forces for the first time in over 26 years with their third and latest collaboration "The Equatorial Stars".
Featuring seven lengthy soundscapes, "The Equatorial Stars" is chock-full of the same atmospheric air as the duo's pioneering efforts "No Pussyfooting" and "Evening Star". Each of the album's seven pieces are similar stylistically being completely void of any central rhythm. The sole acception being track 6 "Altair" which features a rhythm loop that leans on the edge of subtle funk. Because of the similarities between each of the pieces, "The Equatorial Stars" works well as both a lengthy suite and seven individual pieces of music. Fripp's sustained guitar lines are at the forefront recalling his classic style of old without the use of much Midi-processing (a tool of Fripp's recent Soundscaping technique). Eno's minimalist keyboard backgrounds hang motionless creating open spaciness within the music. The styles of both musicians complement each other effortlessly and the end result is another winning combination.
After so many years, it is an absolute blessing the have Fripp and Eno together again with an album of new material. This newest CD compliments their first two albums effortlessly and together, they form a classic trilogy.
Highly Recommended!!
Return
From Kenneth Clark of Baldwin, New York on .
A beautiful flow of sound. Like
it's predecessors it invokes a
wonderful montage of images. Mr.Fripp
and Mr.Eno still can take us to a part of space that is timeless..
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