"Fripp continues his Soundscape series with this typically evocative piece. As with his other work of this period, the theme touches on devotional and spiritual matters, with Fripp painting challenging and solitary impressions with "Frippertronic" brushstrokes. The new age set will most likely balk at his more dissonant passages, but King Crimson fans and those with a taste for the unusual will delight in his ascetic excess." . Tim Sheridan - AllMusic
The Gates Of Paradise, now available for download here, on the music page at DGM Live.
The majority of this Soundscapes album has been assembled from studio performances recorded in the music room at DGM in the spring of 1994. 1.I and 3.XI are taken from the live performances in Argentina, which directly followed, and are based on the opening and closing soundscapes performed at the Cervantes Theatre, Buenos Aires, on 9 June 1994. 4.III was performed and recorded in the foyer to the Queen Elizabeth Hall on 9 March 1996.
Reviewers at progarchives.com have said...
'The Gates Of Paradise' depicts in sound two powerful, conflicting states: absolute terror, and enveloping peace.
"An electronic music conmemoration of life and death, taken as a symbolic parallel of our daily existences and the ever present cosmic transmutations in accordance between with our petty human dimension and our potential proportion in our own universes and the higher ones."
"The Outer Darkness" dwells in the frightful spheres of purgatory, and "The Gates of Paradise" float in the ever blissful states of nirvana, escaping my talent of vocabulary description. The abstract and cacophonous sinister sequences hold their balance with interesting logics, longer drones giving the shape forming monumentally, and the tenderness of divine moments flow with unbelievably slow pace, enjoying each step closer to Eden."
