Robert Fripp : “Let The Power Fall” {UK} [1980] @VBR (Semi Forgotten But Essential Frippertronics Extravaganza)

Ok Robert Fripp is very famous.

Ok We specialize in rare stuff and Robert Fripp’s stuff is not that rare.
Ok.Ok Ok.
But…

I believe that this is one of Fripps forgotten albums and I also believe it truly deserves a second listen.

Most people worship Fripp because of his abrasive riffs in King Crimson. Others worship him because of his arithmetical playing, so disciplined, never making a mistake. He’s a machine. He is always in control.

All those things are valid, true, valuable and undoubtedly extremely influential.

Fripp is a giant among guitar players and he’s not as famous as Clapton or Gilmopur, because he is a semi reclusive intellectual that doesn’t get along very well with fame.

But… there’s one side of Fripp that I believe people should pay more attention, or at least one area of his career that people doesn’t mention often enough: the Frippertronics era.

I feel it is my duty to remind everybody that Frippertronics happened years before the digital age. Nowadays sound morphing is much, much easier. Let’s go back briefly to 1976 or 1978. The addition and mingling of delays, flagers, echoes, compressors and who-knows-what weird gadgets that we came to know as Frippertronics is the result of long hours of experiments that Fripp did in the mid 70’s after the first death of King Crimson. Stabilizing the effects was difficult and nightmarish. Fripp finally tamed the monsters he had created.
Frippertronics also owes much to Brian Eno, and we could say that ambient music was officially born with the Eno-Fripp collaborations (Evening Star and No Pussy Footing. (Although there are many albums released before those, that nowadays we could consider as “ambient music”)

Anyway, “Let The Power Fall” is an album I have always liked and an album I have always needed to come back to.

The way the guitar sounds there has never been repeated, not even by Fripp, which is a pity because there are sonic moments here that deserve further exploration. But I guess Fripp wanted to put the seed in the soil so others would collect the fruit. That’s what ha has been doing all his life anyway.

I hope that this post reminds us, that beyond the progressive side, beyond the neurosis and the improvisational explosions of 90’s and 00’s King Crimson, Fripp also half-invented a totally different genre that has become extremely popular among contemporary listeners.

Get ambiental and…

Keep Listening…!!!

Robert Fripp - 1986...