13th December 1997 (first show)
A remarkable feature of soundscape performances is how the music seemingly arrives as a mysterious but tangible presence irrespective of the immediate surroundings in which it enters. Here, in the first of two remarkable sets, the music alighting upon the Greenwich Village neighbourhood, is the antithesis of the tumult and turmoil of the surrounding city.
Almost sitting outside normal time those swelling symphonic tones evoke feelings of aching loss, intense beauty, of rapturous grace, instilling a sense of the awesome and the ineffable coming down into our world.
When Fripp strikes something that is recognisably a guitar chord, a rarity in the world of soundscapes, that suddenly enters the yawning space of Deep Hover, it breaks the spell. Whether intentional or a brief misstep while loading voices via his pedalboard, it wakes the listener to other possibilities and marks the beginning of a slow but querulous descent into a digital whirlwind that scatters notes into swirling oblivion.
