No Pussyfooting - Robert Fripp & Brian Eno (1973)

(I broke down and added an “eno-involved” tag to track where he crops up around here)

It was 1972. Brian Eno had just left Roxy Music and was prepping for his glammy art rock solo debut, and Robert Fripp was … well, Fripp. He was leading King Crimson through one of the most daring and experimental eras of its history, but somehow that wasn’t nearly edgy enough for him.

Eno was working with a system he’d pioneered that bounced signals back and forth between two reel-to-reel tape machines to loop and layer sounds. For “Heavenly Music Corporation,” he recorded Fripp into the system to build a looping, meandering, slowly expanding backing track, and then overdubbed a take with Fripp playing live over it. The second side of the record, “Swastika Girls” covered similar territory, but with Eno building the loops on a synth before Fripp enters.

Fripp would use a similar double delay system when he started his solo ambient guitar performances, which he called “Frippertronics.”

Definitely worth putting on.