GOD SAVE THE QUEEN / UNDER HEAVY MANNERS

An album featuring one of Mr. Fripp's more notable soundscapes, marred by his singular vision of "Discotronics."

The first two glistening fields of sound pass pleasantly enough, but "1983" is the relevant and most enduring track on "God Save the Queen" and past this point you'll experience a drop in quality like no other - side B is basically occupied by two bouncing riff experiments, unfurnished by anything more than a rudimentary rhythm section and chattered over by David Byrne at perhaps his most irritating. A bit of a pothole on the road to 1981, it seems.

As the 80s approached Robert Fripp found himself purposefully trying to distance himself from the grandiose music he had created in the early to mid-70s. Big progressive rock productions were passe and Fripp was trying to attach himself to the more cutting edge art-rock and new wave bands that were emerging in the late 70s. Minimalism was also a big influence during this period. Composers like Steve Reich and Phillip Glass were enjoying almost rock star status and pop artists such as Devo and Talking Heads were enjoying huge popularity with their minimalist influenced rock.

There was a lot of "buzz" surrounding this release even before it came out. In interviews Fripp hinted at a new lean and intelligent approach to rock that would take him into the brave new world of the 80s. When I first heard this record in 1980 I thought Robert had succeeded in combining Gamelan influenced minimalism with new wave rock and had created a blueprint for many bands to follow. Unfortunately, listening to this record again many years later I find it has not aged well. This record is a good example of the trap you set for yourself when you follow the newest trends too closely, your work ends up being too easily identified with the time period in which it came out.

Side one consists of three ambient instrumentals that feature Fripp's tape looped guitar recording technique known as Frippertronics. The first track, Red Two Scorer is nice enough, but things start to get boring soon after that. Without Eno around to help with production and "treatments", Fripp's guitar sounds stale after a while.

Side two consists of two rock songs that introduce Fripp's new 80s style. The basic idea behind these two songs is not bad, a simple rock beat overlaid with interlocking complicated guitar parts, but there are drawbacks to these songs that undermine the whole project. The first problem is the plodding rhythm section. Surely Fripp could have gotten better musicians, but I guess he thought these guys made him sound more "punk".

Another big problem is that there is no attention to sound texture or production. Music that is repetitive like this really needs some depth and color or it becomes boring quickly. In the hands of a team like Eno and Manzenera this same material would have been a lot more interesting. Finally, the bad icing on the bad cake is the voice of David Byrne on the song Under Heavy Manners. When this record was released Byrne was considered very nouveau hip and it certainly made Robert's record seem more relevant to have him on board. Unfortunately this would be another case of 'trying too hard to be hip' having a bad effect in the long run. They might as well have had Pee Wee Herman do the vocals because nothing says 80s like David Byrne, at the peak of his career, getting away with being totally full of himself and blabbering some pretentious fake madness with that "voice" of his. It has been a long time since anyone has encouraged him to be that self-indulgent.

Fripp tried too hard to be contemporary on this one, and ironically enough that is what makes it sound anachronistic today. It also doesn't help that the production is so flat and unimaginative, this album's blend of ambient and minimalistic styles could have really blossomed under the guidance of a skilled producer

Underrated falls short. A masterpiece from A to Z. The year 1980, the mass arising of drum-box generated music was just to start. Of course most prog pioneers were well established by the time, but this was the future, and ike it or not, all the "Prog-Giants" surrendered to these new boxes and "new" tech/gadgets.

I can mention 1000s of horrible attempts by the Prog top-guns in these matters. These "giants" never knew exactly what to do with these synthetic boxes and the music sounds they generated, and sadly a lot of them still are there trying to figure it out, but their past works are my personal soundtrack, so I won't attack!

Anyway, to me Mr Fripp's "God Save the Queen / Under Heavy Manners" is his real first real solo effort, music wise, talking. Rather than his official first album "Exposure" which sounded more like his way of "exiling" himself away from the "Court of the Crimson King" musical idiom and crowds, like a " I do what I like and feel, and I don't care if you like it or not!" statement. But at the end of that same record we are given a clue to what was really cooking in Mr Fripp's upcoming musical language, the self named * "Frippertronics".

*(Frippertronics:Technically speaking the use of loops of pre-recorded and live recorded electric guitars, sometimes creating a droning experience, by repetition of single structured melodic lines) .

UNDER HEAVY MANNERS / GOD SAVE THE QUEEN! Track 1: A bridge between the first project (Exposure) and this one (including the Talking Heads' master "Head" screaming-singing like to whatever word that ends with -ism.

Track 2: Fast trance-dance pioneer, ( if not the first ), that dissolves slowly into the world of Frippertronics.

Track 3 to 6: Frippertronics presented into single compositions, as in his recent live street and public places presentations and performances. The mood each composition sets varies in proportion of balance, intensity or subtleness, all according to multiple, canon-like, melodic lines, constructed from scratch and multiplied by their own repetitions. This is the "King" himself, back in form, to explore this future and he delivered this gem. Imagine the electrifying droning of different guitar signals, sounding as only this genius could sound.

Somehow I've found out that die-hard "Crimsons" are the main detractors of this work. Just let yourself go, the music will do the rest.

*****5 PA stars without blinking.

P.D. : The original vinyl starts with "Under Heavy Manners" ends with "1983", so the next second record "Let the Power Fall" would start of properly with "1984" its first song.

Inspired by Brian Eno during his work with him, Robert Fripp created a similar method of tape looping sound except he did it with guitar instead of electronics. He threaded reel to reel tape from the feeding real through the player of one unit through the player of a 2nd unit so that the tape would be taken up on the receiving reel on the 2nd unit. He would create a sound that he would layer more sounds over and do this continually so that he would become sort of like a one man band, or at least sound like he was creating more sound than what a single person would normally be able to create at one time. Thus Frippertronics was born. There were several versions of this Frippertronics method and two of them are featured on this double E.P. which was released as 1 LP.

"God Save the Queen" is the first part of this album and consists of 3 tracks. Each one is a study in minimalism, a layering of guitars improvised through the 2 reel to reel units. They are mostly sparse performances with a separate melody sometimes appearing among the guitar layers. This is Pure Frippertonics with nothing but Fripp's guitar and no other processed sound except for the tape units. The music is something like the ebb and flow of the waves and very relaxing. It is hard to understand on the first few listens, but really grows on you after a while. This style of guitar work would be used in a lot of recordings as part of the band, usually produced musically by Fripp as a guest performer and it always gave the music a much fuller sound with the payoff of fewer musicians.

The other half of the recording gives you 2 tracks that illustrates better how Frippertronics sounds with other instruments added in. This is the "Under Heavy Manners" part of the album. This style is what Fripp called Discotronics, the same recording process, but this time with an established rhythm (drums and whatnot) and bass with a few other surprises added in. This definitely gives a full sound to a smaller band. On the title track of this portion of the album, David Byrne sings what sounds like improvised words and melody and this sounds very much like the era it came from. The 2nd track on is over 12 minutes and further explores the full band sound this time without vocals. What's nice about this track is after about the half-way point, the other instruments end while the soundscape created by Fripp's guitar work is left to finish out the track, back to the bare bones of the first part of the album.

Overall, this is not an album for the masses, but it is proof of Fripp's genius and shows his inventiveness in attempting to move the guitar sound into the 80's. The interesting thing here is that bands are still using his techniques and styles today, however, with more updated equipment which produces more interesting sounds. But the technique is still there, the idea is still utilized and with this album, which, even though it isn't exactly a masterpiece, should be something that gets a lot more credit as far as the progression of modern music. No it's not for everyone, but any student of music should be exposed to it and credit is due to Fripp for his experimentation and innovation which has created a lot of the sound that we hear today in music, whether it's pop music or the most innovative progressive music. Not everyone will enjoy both halves of this album, but it still needs to be appreciated. 4 stars.

Don't come to Fripp's second solo album expecting any of the surprisingly tight pop numbers of Exposure, or a return to the approach of King Crimson; Fripp seems to have decided to spend the rest of his short solo career of 1978-1981 (after which he returned to band work) concentrating on exploring the possibilities of Frippertronics, a recording technique developed by Fripp and Eno when they made their mid-1970s albums. This entailed Fripp's guitar playing being recorded to tape and played back on loop as the performance continued - so raw Frippertronic pieces begin sparse and become more and more layered, and Fripp ends up soloing opposite himself. It's a simple gimmick which is used to rather charming effect.

Although the liner notes to the subsequent Let the Power Fall claimed that that album picked up where God Save the Queen left off, it's perhaps truer to say that Let the Power Fall and the God Save the Queen side of this release overlap: both were recorded on Fripp's summer 1979 Frippertronics tour of small venues, but whereas the performances on Let the Power Fall span from June to August, the God Save the Queen tracks all came from appearances on July 30th.

Between this and Let the Power Fall, you have pretty much all the Frippertronics experiments you could want, most likely, unless you're such an addict to the schtick that you want to splash out on the Exposures boxed set, which contains more Frippertronics concerts than anyone could possibly know what to do with. The same constraints that affect the form when played live apply just as much here as there, though in both cases Fripp does a good job of using those constraints as a springboard for creativity. If you liked the Fripp and Eno albums, you'll probably also enjoy much of this.

Particularly noteworthy is 1983, a foreboding track in which Fripp is able to evoke a range of haunting new sounds which sets it apart from much of the rest of his Frippertronic material in how far it goes into the dark landscapes it evokes; think of it as the Frippertronic answer to Eno's Ambient 4: On Land.

The Under Heavy Manners side of the equation is an experiment in Discotronics - taking a Frippertronics performance and then layering more stuff over it. There's funky bass; there's a drum loop; on the title track itself there's even a (pseudonym-disguised) David Byrne, making it sound a bit like an off-cut from My Life In the Bush of Ghosts (which makes sense because this would be around the time that album was being put together, and Fripp guested on it). Fripp, perhaps, was already tiring of the constraints of working as a 100% independent "highly mobile unit" and was looking for ways in which his newly-expanded guitar palette could be applied in a band context.

After this Fripp would more or less jump to working in a band context - first in the League of Gentlemen, then in Discipline, and then Discipline surprised everyone (including Fripp) by metamorphosing into a revived King Crimson. Although Fripp would do occasional subsequent Frippertronic concerts, the success of the new King Crimson would soon take up much of his time; although he would do occasional solo records subsequent to this, it would be in pursuit of the "Soundscapes" technique, taking advantage of new technologies to perform something akin in creative spirit to Frippertronics but distinct in execution. So between this and Let the Power Fall, and the recently issued Washington Square Church concert recordings, you really capture the peak of Frippertronics.