No Pussyfooting marked the beginning of a very fruitful collaboration between King Crimson founder Robert Fripp and Roxy Music electronics whiz Brian Eno. There is some of King Crimson’s intensity to be found in Fripp’s guitar leads, but otherwise the side-long pieces on No Pussyfooting are antithetical to the exploits associated with the pair’s previous work. Using a system of tape loops that builds layers of sound by repeating the same snippets, Eno creates a dense and exotic backdrop of musical texture from which Fripp’s guitar emerges and into which it ultimately submerges. It’s an important record, if only because it signals the start of Brian Eno’s ambient experiments, which sought to create music that existed in a space simultaneously rather than follow the linear course most often associated with electronic music. The first piece, “The Heavenly Music Corporation,” actually dates from September 1972, and finds the pair invoking the sound of jets amidst soothing waves of electronics and Fripp’s otherworldy guitar. “Swastika Girls,” recorded one year later, expands the sonic palette to the strumming of taut strings and some buzzsaw guitar leads that compete against an undercurrent of soothing melody. No Pussyfooting remains an impressive musical manifesto, despite the fact that these sounds have been packaged more succinctly (Evening Star) and explored more fully (Discreet Music, Let the Power Fall) on subsequent efforts. Both sides offer an interesting musical mantra chant, but art rockers beware: only minimalists, ambients and trance fans need apply.
Fripp & Eno: (No Pussyfooting) (1973)
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John Cale rocks and the results are frighteningly good. Recorded with Brian Eno and Phil Manzanera, Fear is absurdly inventive, and Cale is quick to show off the fruit of its collective oddness on the opening “Fear Is A Man’s Best Friend,” which quickly morphs from a harmless pop song into mounting, elastic paranoia. From there, all bets are off as Cale and crew careen into rock’s conventions. “Buffalo Ballet” is gilded country pop, “Barracuda” is tickled by an ocean of tiny oddities, “Emily” is sweetness remembered, “Ship Of Fools” is otherwordly pop haunted by the spirit of Christmas. Fear is a plate of succulent oddities until “Gun” arrives. Here, Cale manages to channel the dark energy of Lou Reed (or Patti Smith or The Stooges if you prefer) into eight minutes of bleak fury that move so purposefully it feels like four, and you begin to wonder whether John Cale isn’t some mischievous, mythical god among us, donning different forms to fight away the boredom of a life meted out in flinty minutes. “The Man Who Couldn’t Afford To Orgy,” the album’s single, is actually the least interesting song on here, a male/female duet that plods along to some hoary country melody and only incites me to want to put The Kinks’ Soap Opera on the turntable. All is forgiven, however, with “You Know More Than I Know;” luminous genius, that. The album closes with another menacing rock/punk experiment, “Momomma Scuba,” featuring what sounds to be an army of guitars. I have enjoyed every John Cale album to date, but Fear is the man’s best album so far. Very fitting for his first on Island, since you wouldn’t want to be caught on one without it.
Kronomyth 5.5: LAYERS OF AYERS. This album had been the source of speculation on my part for years as it represented such an unusual axis of talent. And no less a luminary than Dave Thompson has found in June 1, 1974 the nexus of art-rock royalty, or at least enough inspiration to write an entire book around it. On a superficial level, this is a live album featuring Kevin Ayers and his touring band at the time (The Soporifics) plus a constellation of stars who scored extremely high on the absurdity/profundity scale: Eno, John Cale, Robert Wyatt, Nico. (As if that weren’t enough, Mike Oldfield drops by for a lovely guitar solo on “Everybody’s Sometime And Some People’s All The Time Blues.”) Add to that a little bit of history (a rare and early glimpse of Eno on stage as a solo artist) and an unhealthy dose of drama (Cale had discovered Ayers sleeping with his wife the night before this performance), and you have the makings of a memorable evening. As to whether this represents a divinely orchestrated alignment of stars, well, not to me. Just the previous year, The Rainbow had hosted 
Kronomyth 15.0: LOVE IT TO THE MOON AND BACK. I remember a friend playing this record for me when it first came out and him being super-jazzed about it and me nodding politely but secretly counting the minutes until I could go home and play Here Come The Warm Jets to flush out the uncomfortable experience of what to me sounded like Brian Eno beating an owl with a rain stick in an empty grain silo. It took me years to appreciate the ambient music of Brian Eno, which came only after forgiveness for what I perceived as mucking up half of Heroes and Low and turning his back on a promising career as a rock artist. It really wasn’t until listening to Discreet Music that the whole ambient thing clicked with me and I realized that music could be static and lovely, suspended in a perfect moment and examined absent of time and space. Brian Eno created Apollo: Atmospheres & Soundtracks to accompany film footage from the first lunar landing. The music, co-created with brother Roger and Daniel Lanois, captures the alien beauty and stillness of space in a way that Tangerine Dream touched upon but never rested at because of their classical need for thematic development. Tangerine Dream wrote space symphonies, Eno wrote a meditation on space. Comparing this album to other “space” soundtracks is like comparing 2001: A Space Odyssey to other space movies; both works use the native silence of space to speak volumes about the vastness, coldness and strangeness of the cosmos. Notes resonate in isolation, falling slowly in endless space, forming ice crystals and apparently inducing spontaneous haikus. Unfortunately, about midway through (the dark side of the moon), the soundtrack gets hijacked by a cowboy movie as Daniel Lanois breaks out his steel guitar (Eno had earlier shown a predilection for maudlin country music on “Everything Merges With The Night” and “Here He Comes”), and only in the closing “Stars” does the record return to its original state of space-grace. If you’re listening to this on a programmable CD player (which I realize is now as antiquated as a turntable), just skip through tracks eight through eleven. Artists through the ages have tried to capture the otherwordly beauty of the moon; few have done it was well as Apollo. Owl never hear the moon the same.
Bryan Ferry returns to the role of world-weary romantic on Mamouna, but he’s picked up some new tricks along the way, made plain in the opening moments of “Don’t Want To Know.” The electronic effects announce the singer’s intent to infuse his muse with the mix-heavy melange of ambient/techno, underscored by the participation of Brian Eno. And the Roxy reunion doesn’t end there: Phil Manzanera and Andy Mackay return on a few tracks as well. Bryan has never really shaken the ghost of Avalon, choosing instead to bring the original vision into sharper focus over the years. It’s the attention to sonic detail on Mamouna that stands out in my mind; the melodies are otherwise transparent, the vocals lovely but reduced to melancholy mumbling in spots. The guitar parts read like one of Eno’s ambient endeavors: mood guitar, atmosphere guitar, drift guitar, scratch guitar. These drift in and out of music, as do the sultry backing vocalists, found voices, and Bryan’s own keyboards. (Unlike Bête Noire, Ferry writes all the material and plays much of it himself.) It’s a remarkable world, one that wraps around you like a thick mist and offers tantalizing shapes in the shadows. And then there’s the inseparable beat, the unseen heart in this amorphous entity. At first, Mamouna is captivating, “Don’t Want To Know” and “Your Painted Smile” in particular. But, as often happens with Bryan Ferry, style and substance seem inextricable; “Mamouna” slips past like a cool breeze, “The 39 Steps” dissipates into the darkness much as Avalon’s “The Space Between.” The closing tracks shake the dust from Morpheus’ cloak to deliver scintillating sounds: the warmly rendered “Which Way To Turn,” the invigorating “Wildcat Days,” the surprising “Gemini Moon.” As the mist clears in the waning moments of “Chain Reaction,” we’re treated to a glimpse of what surely must be Roxy’s old ghost, reminded again that the two spirits dwell in the same house. For some reason, I approach these albums braced for disappointment and walk away resolute in my respect for Ferry’s artistry. If I place this behind Bête Noire, it’s by a nose at best. The two are both solid works, and I had initially expected to endorse Mamouna (downbeat mood and all), until I reflected that the disc could have been even better. It’s to Bryan Ferry’s credit that I can hold him to such high standards after all this time, but the fact remains that half of Mamouna is merely good. The other half is well worth the trip for any would-be Orpheus, a ferry ride across dark waters to where lost loves loom like shadows.