Saint Andrews Church Sutton Soundscape Review

Posted by Sid Smith
4 Jun 2006

Junklight has sent us this report of Fripp's soundscape at Saint Andrews church in Sutton yesterday.

"Last night we went to see Robert Fripp perform his soundscapes live at St. Andrews Church in Sutton. Last time he played here I lived less than 20 minutes drive away and was extremely annoyed to find that I had missed it. So when he arranged to play here again I leapt at the chance.

The church is an extremely appropriate place for this music I think. Although now an atheist I grew up with going to church and the hard benches and the atmosphere of the space provide a respectful air to my mind and put the audience in a much better frame of mind than say at a rock venue.

We arrived very early (google maps reckoned it would take an hour and 40. It took an hour) and ended up hanging round the church. Mr Fripp appeared at one point and headed off down the road. When he returned we had a walk around the church just as he was soundtesting. The evening sunlight, the church yard and the soundscapes coming from within was a heavenly combination in itself.

Inside the church the audience assembled fairly quickly. The sound system was playing bell sounds - almost like windchimes. As we queued to get in Mr Fripp walked out past the queue smiling politely. At 19:30 he reappeared (as if by magic - I assume the church has another door) behind the solar voyager. He started adding tentative sounds to the bells. Combined with the audience’s chatter these sounds where almost unsettling. And then the threshold bells cleaned away this mood in an almost physical way.

The first piece started building up. What was amazing was the way from the bits and pieces of the first seconds of the soundscapes they way they suddenly came together. The first piece reminded me a lot of one of the tracks on equatorial stars. I was really doing my best to loose myself on the music and not to analyse it so I haven’t huge amounts to say about it.

The second larger piece started with shorter almost frippertronic style notes. For some reason the word ’ghosts’ comes to mind. I know not why. There was even the tiniest hint of a groove early on. After a little while this piece too became more full bodied and swelled to astonishing proportions - the amount of music coming from a single person was quite amazing. Fripp then unfolded the piece and we were left with a two separate sounds that wound around each other.

I guess there where fiddly bits in between but my memory is just of the two main pieces. Fripp then got up and bowed to the appreciative applause. He spoke briefly about how music is an act of worship (whether played in secular places or sacred ones). He commented that he had recently played in a decommissioned brothel. He then noted that English pews are hard and that he thought that this was to keep the worshipers alert. In this case he continued we where welcome to wander around if we liked.

About a third of the audience took this up to my initial annoyance but the last part had an astonishing intensity and was much more insistent. I have wondered before if this adversity brings something to the music - listening to the downloadable soundscapes I have noticed that the ones where Fripp was unhappy with the audience often have something very special about them. This music was so urgent and powerful I was surprised to have my concentration broken briefly by someone laughing behind me - how could you be in the presence of this music and not be enveloped by it? to not be drawn into its depth and power. Beyond me. It was during this last piece a burning question occurred to me: "Does it hurt?". This music ached with loss and mortality. Truly beautiful.

My girlfriend commented on the way back that it would have been better slightly later (so that the sun was setting which the performance just missed) and maybe in the winter. For me I selfishly would have liked to been the only audience member - alone in that space with that music. We can dream."


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