(NO PUSSYFOOTING)

Its funny what two musical geniuses can do when you put them together. Brian Eno had been in contact with Robert Fripp for a time before this one night when he invited Fripp to his home studio. Eno, as it happened, was experimenting with the idea of using tape loops to make music. They eventually had an idea where Fripp would play various drones and rises on his Les Paul, and Eno would take recordings of these and loop them to make them last longer. Fripp would then lay down a few solos to be put on top of the loops. The result is Side One, "The Heavenly Music Corporation", the first masterpiece of ambient. Perhaps the great secret sauce behind the majesty of proto-ambient is the willingness to allow for soft solos, and Fripp's wonderful playing on all guitar parts gives us atmosphere, and then gives us something to enjoy. The ending of the track tops off the piece with a wonderful descending guitar tone. A year later, Fripp put some guitar over loops from Eno's VCS3 and called the result "Swastika Girls": they apparently had found a torn page from some sort of Third Reich themed lad's mag or something of the sort, so the story goes. While not as excellent as the purely guitar "Corporation", it still pleases with ever wonderful guitar work and ethereal VCS tones. Not even Eno knew that one day at a German airport he would think to come back to these experiments and forge "Music For Airports"; the world was blindsided by how good and influential this album was, and only years after it first dropped. This is the font of ambient, and its water is sweet.