GOD SAVE THE QUEEN / UNDER HEAVY MANNERS

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.