It’s midnight by the time Andrews, Lee, Toobad and Fripp get back onto the stage of the Bayou for their second performance of the evening. Given its prominence, it’s all too easy to focus in on Fripp’s guitar from the fast-moving motifs to the near-reckless pile-up of notes hurtling the length of the fretboard. However, Andrews work, though sometimes subsumed in less than optimal recordings, is always a treat. At this show, the soundboard cassette favours Barry Andrews’ work on the Crumar organ that had accompanied him during his time as a member of XTC. Providing dark blotches of snarling colour during Christian Children, a vivid Day-Glo backdrop on the Gozinbulx or the hypersonic morse code staccato on a hurtling rendition of Eye Needle here, his approach is highly textural and impressionistic in between the pointillism of the bands overall sound. Musicologist and Fripp biographer, Eric Tamm says of Andrews, “he was equal to the task of balancing Fripp’s speedy guitar ostinatos with organ counterpoint of complementary dexterity and contrapuntal interest.”
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