Posted by Sid Smith on Apr 1, 2014 - This post is archived and may no longer be relevant

Today marks the release of two recently discovered tapes found in the DGMLie archive by Alex Mundy featuring percussionist Frank Perry, Brian Eno and Robert Fripp.


Spiral Of Lo consists of a solo percussion set by Frank Perry recorded at Command Studios in June 1972 during the making of Keith Tippett’s Fripp-produced Blueprint album.


The other session was a solo VCS3 loop by Brian Eno, which hails from the Matching Mole’s Little Red Record sessions, again at Command Studios.  Fripp then overdubbed acoustic and sustained electric passages over both sessions.

They originally formed the backing tracks for The Cosmic Children album, a proposed Fripp collaboration with Walli Elmlark, a New York Journalist and wicca witch, which was never released and whose master tapes have long been lost.  

Side one of The Cosmic Children consisted of Fripp and Elmlark in conversation over the Perry / Fripp backing track, while side two had Elmlark in conversation with well-known London DJ Jeff Dexter as the Fripp and Eno piece played in the background.

Speaking to NME’s Simon Stable in July 1972 Fripp stated: "The function of the album is to reach out to the Children like the drummer from Badfinger, I want to say; ’You’re not nutty, you’re not a freak because you can’t relate to what’s around you…’ "

The album was discussed when Fripp gave an interview with Trouser Press’s Ihor Slabicky in 1978:

RF: The music for it was a 45-second piece by Eno on synthesizer which I did in a way that lasted about 20 minutes. I just repeated it time and time again and cross-faded it in places. Side one has a percussion solo by Frank Perry, who’s a quite remarkable percussion player. But overall it wasn’t a very good album. It certainly wasn’t a commercial one, so it was never released.

Sadly the spoken passages of The Cosmic Children were not part of the cache of tapes found in the DGM tape store in February this year. However, after some careful Mister Stormy restoration work, the separate instrumental tracks by Perry and Eno, along with their Fripp overdubs, are now available here on DGMLie as Spiral Of Lo. You can read my take over on the blog.