The marvelous thing about Mister Stormy blowing the dust off the multi-tracks is that we get to hear a little of the processes involved in the recording of albums we know and love. It makes one consider how different the piece we think of as forever preserved in aural amber somehow made malleable and prone to radically altered outcomes had the decision made during the mixing been different. So this is an alternative reality version of Prince Rupert’s Lament from Lizard. Not only do we have a different guitar solo (there were four takes in total) but, as we can hear, there was another guitar accompanying the bass providing extra harmonic information and some mood-shifting colour. This is in keeping with Fripp’s approach during the making of an album, placing a kind of musical scaffolding in the early stages of building up a track, and then remove it all for the final unveiling of the finished piece.
This track is now available as part of Mr Stormy's next bumper collection. His fourth year of treasures from the murky, cavernous DGM archives, torch in hand, fedora upon his head is now available for download.
