1) The Outer Darkness I – X; 2) The Gates Of
Paradise I – II; 3) The Outer Darkness XI; 4) The Gates Of Paradise III – IV.
General verdict: A farily convincing, but not terribly entertaining,
personal look at what the two different sides of the afterlife could be like
for all of us. Might work better with mushrooms.
As of now, this is officially the very last
solo Robert Fripp album recorded in the studio, and it is very easy to miss it
completely in the ocean of late period King Crimson albums, archival King Crimson
releases, and ProjeKcts. However, it is a fairly unique project for Fripp — a
lengthy, conceptual, and quite ambitious ambient
recording whose artistic subject is not that far removed from the interests of King
Crimson, yet whose actual execution is quite different from both any type of KC
album or even any of Frippʼs previous side projects. The closest analogy would
most likely be some of his past Frippertronics exercises from No Pussyfooting and onwards, but The Gates Of Paradise have very little,
if any, of those trademark drawn-out howling guitar lines that usually characterize
Frippʼs work.
The actual concept, a musical interpretation of
the base differences between Heaven and Hell, or, if you wish, Robertʼs musical
tribute to the Divine Comedy, is not
altogether new. That Fripp is quite capable of creating Bosch-level sonic nightmares
(such as he did with Larksʼ Tongues)
and Rafael-level sonic idylls (ʽSheltering Skyʼ, etc.), is well known. But
here, this is the core focus of the album, and he achieves his goals with
fairly unconventional means. I am not sure whether all the sounds we hear are processed
guitars or if there is actual synthesizer work involved, but regardless of
technicalities, the overall sonic approach here is that of a church organ, with
a bit of pianoforte mixed in on the last track. It really feels like we have
been temporarily locked in Robertʼs private little church building and he is
giving us a tour of the religious possibilities of his brand new organ (if that
sounded a bit dirty, Iʼm not holding myself responsible).
Like any ambient album with emphasis on overall
atmosphere rather than overall dynamics, The
Gates Of Paradise will probably not command your attention through all of
its 59 minutes, but, as in many similar cases, the length here is mainly just
an auxiliary mechanism to get across the point. Four tracks are interspersed —
two dealing with "outer darkness" and the other two with the "gates
of Paradise" themselves, with the music naturally being more ominous and
aggressive and thunderstormy on the latter and more serene and solemnly
resplendent on the latter. The ʽOuter Darknessʼ bits would have ideally fit
onto a Kubrick soundtrack, be it Space Odyssey
or The Shining: alternating between quietly
ominous background hum and all-out sustained ruckus, they may be quite
psychologically unstable if listened to in the proper headphones. ʽThe Gates Of
Paradiseʼ, on the contrary, is J. S. Bach meets New Age (first track) and John Cage
meets New Age (second track), with pseudo-prepared-piano a-plenty introducing a
slight touch of actual melody, then melting away to make way for even more peaceful
organ textures.
Overall, it is not so much a great album as simply
a surprising gesture from Fripp. Severely limited in ideas, The Gates Of Paradise will never stand a
chance against classic Tangerine Dream or Klaus Schulze when it comes to
electronic or electronically enhanced soundscapes of Heaven and Hell — but in a
way, it works as a special sort of meta-artistic self-commentary on Frippʼs own
classic legacy. Like, you were wondering if you were really right when your brain came up with all those religious /
mythological images triggered by ʽThe Talking Drumʼ or ʽStarlessʼ? Well, this
album proves that you certainly were. You were interested in whether the music
of King Crimson could ever be directly interpreted in terms of good old Christianity?
This album shows that such an interpretation is not impossible.
As to whether Iʼd ever want to listen to the
album again... well, maybe on some particularly long and uneventful nighttime
air flight, where the listening experience could result in an epiphany or two. As
it is, I think that maybe the results would have turned out more interesting if
Fripp had brought Eno along one more time — on his own, he is just not as
efficient in weaving a fully convincing and addictive atmosphere. But at the
very least, a Soundscape is a Soundscape, and the record delivers more or less
what it advertises. Nobody ever said, after all, that the afterlife would be
particularly full of dynamic events.
No comments:
Post a Comment