FRIPP UP THE JUNCTION
Posted by Sid Smith on Dec 13, 2005 - This post is archived and may no longer be relevant

Tim Bowness, ambient-crooner superstar with No-Man and Centrozoon (amongst others) has sent me a review of RF playing at Cambridge’s Junction.

In his email he mentioned that No-Man colleague, Steve Wilson (of Porcupine Tree fame) and Tim will be getting together to record a new album in 2006. 

Tracks from the recently reissued, Speak have been receiving airplay on BBC Radio 3’s Late Junction show.  Just in case you missed it first time around, Tim’s solo album, My Hotel Year is well worthy of your attention also. 

So without further ado here is Tim’s account of the performance at The Junction.

Omnipresent cigarette smoke, constant idle banter and the presence of a few
pissed-up punters who clearly mistook The Junction for The Dog And Scrote.
Welcome to the heart of the British gigging circuit.

Subtle, atmospheric and managing an air of dignity despite the inappropriate
setting, Master Fripp treated the part of the audience that was interested
in listening to half an hour of glacial and graceful Soundscapes.

The last third of his set, which featured a more pronounced guitar solo
voice over looped orchestral textures and constantly shifting melodic rhythm
patterns provided a potent ending and my favourite section of the show. The
'guitar as piano' sequence that preceded this glorious finale was less to my
taste, but still bore the unmistakeable mark of a still unique talent.

Although others found them distracting, I personally liked the visuals and
for me, they gave the performance an added poignancy.

Because of them, the music came across as a suitably elegiac soundtrack to a
Fripp mini-biopic that encompassed 36 years of a very particular and highly
peculiar pop history. A story was imposed on the music where perhaps none
existed (hence the criticisms) but as it was a story that I (and countless
others) have an emotional connection to, I thought it added a powerful
dimension to the performance.

Images of a younger RF at the piano with Peter Gabriel or striking a pose
with Captain Eno were complemented by sad, stately, yearning string loops
that provided a contemporary requiem for an irretrievable past that was
shared by many of the audience members as well as by RF himself.

As someone who loved seeing Soundscapes at the QEH foyer, I'm not sure that
The Junction was remotely the right place to see something so delicate and
thoughtful, but at least some people seemed to genuinely enjoy the
performance and the final response was noticeably warm. RF also treated the
crowd to a typically eccentric end of tour monologue (beginning with the
inevitable, 'Good evening, Hippies"), which suggested a second career as an
intellectual Jethro was his for the asking.

Maybe it's because I was spoilt as a teenager by all-seated, non-smoking
venues such as the Manchester Apollo and the Manchester Library Theatre
(where I once saw a stunning set by a chemically numbed Nico), I've never
enjoyed the crammed, all-standing  sweat-drenched, smoke-saturated
atmosphere of the average Rock gig.

For me, the Rock Club isn't somewhere that potentially fragile music can
thrive or be listened to with any degree of attention to detail. When No-Man
played at similar (though smaller) venues in the early 1990s, we ended up
getting louder and louder and killing whatever intimacy existed in the
music. Ethereal ballads got dropped from the set and existing repertoire
evolved into mutant Metal pastiches as Steven cranked up his guitar and I
developed a mighty Bon Scott howl in order to get noticed. As a consequence,
we've not played live for 12 years.

As a powerful and precise Rock band, Porcupine Tree can thrive in such an
unforgiving venue and demand immediate attention from its audience, but the
drifting and unimposing nature of Soundscapes are always going to lose out
in such circumstances.

As a fitting coda, I spent of most of the next day suffering from a constant
headache and several vomiting fits. For those who don't believe passive
smoking has an effect on others, my Goth-white face (limagine Robert Smith
after a month in Alaska) would have provided ample evidence to the contrary.

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