DAVID SYLVIAN & ROBERT FRIPP: THE FIRST DAY

The early-90s collaboration between the talents of David Sylvian and Robert Fripp has birthed a marvelous exploration of elegiac art rock infused with improvisational bits and unorthodox rhythmic disruptions. The 1993 album 'The First Day' is composed of seven pieces of music whose style ranges from free-form funk to dazzling guitar improvisations as the duo is joined by stick player Trey Gunn, who would later join a new iteration of King Crimson as well as drummer Jerry Marotta and percussionist Marc Anderson, with David Bottril producing the record. After Fripp had invited Sylvian to form a new King Crimson, the latter had instead redirected the opportunity to a studio and live project, hence anticipating what would become 'The First Day', one of the most brilliant and overlooked albums of that decade, a record that oversees the fascinating merge of two of the most ingenious talents of the past two decades.

'God's Monkey' is the first song on this album, an artsy rock/pop tune with fine melodies and minimal but sufficiently dazzling amounts of Fripp-style picking, only a taster of what is about to come. It becomes immediately obvious how well-suited Sylvian's vocals are to the rich and disjointed guitar sweeps of Robert Fripp. A quirky single follows in the face of 'Jean the Birdman', a song that almost exhibits a pop sensibility, definitively contrasting with the avant-garde 10-minute suite 'Firepower', originating from a live jam and greatly extended in the studio, with prominent contributions from Fripp. The dynamics of 'Brightness Fall', on the other hand, certainly evoke a familiarity with the music on 'THRAK', which would come a bit later, while the textured piece '20th Century Dreaming' is another jam-based movement filled with mesmerizing passages. The centerpiece here has to the 18-minute 'Darshan', a piece based on a repetitive rhythmic pattern with various guitar-based, electronic and vocal pieces developing over it, leading to an intense and challenging but gorgeous piece of experimental rock, followed only by one of Fripp's ambient pieces, 'Bringing Down the Light'. A majestic collaboration truly in the spirit of progressive, this album is avant-garde and disruptive, but also beautiful and enchanting.

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