Robert Fripp - Sleevenotes to Radical Action

Posted by Iona Singleton
11 Nov 2016

Robert Fripp - Sleevenotes to Radical Action

 

I

  1. Studio and live are two worlds. Would you, the audience, prefer to have a love letter or a hot date? Each have their value. Crimson were always a band for a hot date. From time to time they could write a love letter, too, but for me they were better in the clinches.

 

  1. Sometimes music leans over and takes the musician into its confidence. If the audience is present while it's happening, the event can move into a very special time frame that deserves the word "eternity". Any "eternal" moment is the same as any other "eternal" moment: it's always there, if we are.

 

sleevenotes to Frame by Frame: The Essential King Crimson (1992)

 

II

The aim in presenting live performance is to reflect the spirit of the group in a moment of its appearance. Live recording is not a precise art. But then, neither is recording.

Mixing a recorded studio performance is always a translation. Mixing a live performance is even more a translation, because it attempts to represent a wider event than can be contained within the studio.

 

Any mix presents a particular worldview. We are not neutral, nor purely responsive, nor can we quite direct the action: all three come together. The aim is to be true to the musical event in its moment.

 

The live performance of music is in its nature ephemeral. Our experience of what is, on the surface, a relatively brief event may resonate in our lives to profound and continuing effect. Simply put, music can reach over and change our lives    directly and immediately. Our experiencing takes place in sequential time, but is not always governed    by it.

 

sleeve notes to Absent Lovers (1998)

 

III

Live performance is as available to the innocent audient as they are available to enter, embrace and participate in a moment that is on the wing; and then kiss it goodbye.

 

We can’t film it, we can’t photograph it, we can’t record it. So here’s the viddy and triple album of King Crimson live in 2015, mostly in Takamatsu.

 

IV

Radical Action To Unseat The Hold Of Monkey Mind

 

  1. What is Radical Action To Unseat The Hold Of Monkey Mind?
  2. Things are not what we believe them to be. Neither are they otherwise.

Just beneath the surface of our perceptions lie riches: freely available, willing, wishing to be seen and     accepted.

 

  1. Yeah. Right. So, What does Radical Action To Unseat The Hold Of Monkey Mind mean?
  2. What I like about this band is, that what it is actually doing is not what it appears to be doing.

 

Robert Fripp  

Friday 8th. July, 2016; DGM HQ, Wiltshire, England. 



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