(NO PUSSYFOOTING)
Fripp & Eno
•Progressive Electronic
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3.60
| 141 ratings | 20 reviews | 25% 5 stars
Excellent addition to any |
Studio Album, released in 1973 Songs / Tracks Listing 1. The Heavenly Music Corporation (20:55) - Robert Fripp / Gibson Les Paul electric guitar, pedal Fx, composer & producer
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FRIPP & ENO (No Pussyfooting) ratings distribution
(141 ratings)
Essential: a masterpiece of progressive rock music(25%)Excellent addition to any prog rock music collection(38%)Good, but non-essential (24%)Collectors/fans only (10%)Poor. Only for completionists (3%)
FRIPP & ENO (No Pussyfooting) reviews
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Collaborators/Experts Reviews
SPECIAL COLLABORATOR Honorary Collaborator
Side 1 was reputedly recorded at Eno's flat one night after they had shared a bottle of wine. Fripp produced long, droning notes from his guitar which were looped and manipulated by Eno. Layers of sound shift and move almost imperceptibly into new forms, with everything taking place slowly and gracefully - the impression is not of a composition with a defined beginning and end, but rather of an excerpt from a much longer piece which could still be slowly evolving years later. As with much of the best minimal music, very little appears to happen but at the end of side 1 you find yourself wondering just how the piece got to 'there' from 'here'.
Side 2 follows a similar pattern, although on this piece Eno also uses his VCS3 to add to the texture. Even more than side 1, this sounds like the product of cold, detached intellects, the very antithesis of the sweaty physicality of rock. At the same time it's bold and radical in the way that the best rock music should be - although minimalism had been around for some time, and plenty of German innovators were exploring the possibilities of electronics and synthesisers, this was highly unexpected coming from members of comparatively mainstream acts like Roxy Music and King Crimson.
Aside from the music itself, this is also a significant album in that it can be seen as the first step towards Frippertronics and towards Eno's ambient experiments of the late 70s/early 80s. Fripp and Eno would work together again, occasionally in their own right or on other people's projects, and their paths continue to cross even now. This is a landmark album, and is highly recommended to anyone with an interest in minimalism and electronica.
SPECIAL COLLABORATOR Honorary Collaborator
SPECIAL COLLABORATOR Prog Folk
This album is maybe historically important and was maybe groundbreaking at the time , but there is not much meat in it. Groundbreaking to a certain point too as in Germany there were tons of groupds didling with electronic music , were more ahead and more sophisticated: Tangerine Dream , Kluster, Ash Ra Tempel etc... The fact that this album became so important to the public eye, I think, is due to the SMBWMP (Stupid Mindless British Weekly Music Press - NME & MM) that held Eno much in admiration and its collaboration with the master of depth and soberness,Mr. Fripp! As for the music , it clearly predates most of Eno's Ambient music album series.
Rarely do I give an historically important album such a low rating , but really, in regards with today's standards, this one is really non-essential! Actually, I rounded it up to the third star!!!
PROG REVIEWER
PROG REVIEWER
Two of the most innovative english musicians offers new, floating and truely ethereal music. No Pussyffoting is a wedding of electronic instruments and electric guitars. A real success ! Waves of synthetizers from Eno creates a mystical ambiance, while Fripp's guitar playing, calmer than in King Crimson's records, is spacey and trippy, nonetheless always haunting and personal. The album consists in two long pieces of nearly 20 minutes where time and space do not exist anymore.
The Heavenly Music Corporation is the most beautiful piece of music here, purely contemplative, growing and deep. The music evolves slowly with mysterious ambiances created by Eno superposed with Fripp's improvisations, alternating delicate and fast moments. The french electronic band Heldon has undoubtly been inspired from this tune. It gets angrier at the middle of the song but then calms downs and sounds die softly until the end. Magic ! The second side of the disc, Swastika Girls, is more electronic driven and minimalist. Rather odd sounds and pieces of small melodies grow up together to create a meditative atmosphere. Guitars appear in the second part of the song, both relaxing and terrifying by moments. As the melody softens, the sounds emerging from the synthetizers become stranger and stranger.
Despite its long passages, No Pussyfooting is a brilliant tour de force by Fripp and Eno. Apart from other experimental acts from this period, the artists created something unique and timeless which serves as a milestones for ambient and electronic musicians. A must !
SPECIAL COLLABORATOR Honorary Collaborator / Retired Admin
"No pussyfooting" contains of just two tracks, one on each side of an LP. The music consists of just guitar and keyboards, with no other musicians being involved in the performances. The music is however manipulated through post recording techniques such as the use of tape loops. It should of course be borne in mind that as these recordings date from the early 1970's, they pre-date sampling, midis, processors etc.; tape loops in this case really does mean recording tapes jointed together to form loops!
There's very little music here as such, this is an avant-garde piece of self indulgence which is totally improvised. Anyone hearing this without knowing who it is by could be forgiven for thinking it was recorded by a group of spotty teenagers armed with a guitar and a keyboard who spent a bit time on a tape deck after recording their efforts. The problem is though, that pretty much sums up what this is. Robert Fripp is undoubtedly a competent guitarist, but his efforts are lost in sea of repetitious mumbo jumbo which goes absolutely nowhere.
The two pieces which make up the album were recorded almost a year apart in 1972 and 1973. It would be difficult however to justify the delay in terms of writers block since, on the face of it, little if any premeditation went into either track.
While I would not list ambient electronic music as my chosen genre, there is much of it which I enjoy. The sounds, which are often more important than the music when it comes to this unique genre, can often be pleasant and relaxing. I cannot though find anything here other than noise of the sake of noise.
Both Robert and Brian have shown themselves to be accomplished in their chosen fields. It seems to me though that any success and recognition enjoyed by this release is purely on the strength of their reputations, not on the contents herein.
PROG REVIEWER
"The Heavenly Music Corporation" is my favourite of the two compositions. The sounds drift along quietly until after 3 minutes when we start to hear Fripp's guitar coming to life. The guitar is more prominant after 7 minutes.There is a section after 10 minutes where it sounds like the guitar is crying out. Some fantastic guitar melodies 16 minutes in as waves of synths pulsate. Nice. 20 minutes in the drones slowly pulse to end the song.
"Swastika Girls" is a difficult listen for me as Eno is more prominant,especially with the use of his VCS3. The noises are strange and they play over and over, it's actually quite annoyoying. Fripp comes in before 8 minutes with some tasty guitar sounds that come and go.
Well as much as I can appreciate this ambient recording I can't rate this more than 3 stars.
COLLABORATOR Honorary Collaborator / In Memoriam
As a long time fan of Fripp and Eno as individual artists and of their second duo album, Evening Star, I avoided adding this one to my collection because the album and track titles weren't as compelling as those on Evening Star. No Pussyfooting? The Heavenly Music Corporation? Swastika Girls? What the hell? Well so happens I was browsing at my local independent records store recently, wasn't finding much of interest, came across the 2 CD limited edition version, and decided to give it a try.
If I were to play this to the unacquainted and do the "guess the year" game, I bet few music fans would be able to place the year of this album's creation at or around 1973. There is a certain timeless quality to it. When you consider that this did actually come out in 1973, the No Pussyfooting album title actually does fit. No one had ever done any music like this before then that I know of. It was originally released as two long tracks consisting of Eno tape loops and Fripp on solo guitar. It's the beginning of Frippertronics and what Eno would later term ambient music, which now encompasses some music by some artists that came before.
Eno defined ambient music as music which could be "actively listened to with attention or as easily ignored, depending on the choice of the listener". So indeed, many a progressive music fan might find this stuff boring. Being a long time fan of ambient, I find this to be an essential part of my collection now. And if you are a fan of Fripp or Eno's non-ambient works, you might want to try this one out anyway.
The special edition has extra versions of the two pieces. The two tracks are run backwards and the first one is run at half speed. And would you believe those versions work as well as the originals? I don't think there's much out there in music you could do that with.
Fripp and Eno boldly not pussyfooting.
PROG REVIEWER
Descriptions of the two tracks would almost have to be either incredibly short or incredibly long; it would be hard to find something in between. They could be short, on the one hand, because the overall picture of each of the tracks doesn't evolve much over time. "The Heavenly Music Corporation," in almost its entirety, consists of Fripp's atonal guitar warblings, cycling and fading in and out a most unsettling manner, while side two's "Swastika Girls" is more of the same except with some interaction with Eno's synth loops (as said before). On the other hand, there is actually low-key development of these tracks that becomes more obvious with each listen, and this is why descriptions of the tracks could be incredibly long; I could, if I wanted, spend a solid year digesting this album and come back with a review that pours into every nook and cranny and elaborates on why minute 16 of side one is a great counterpoint to minute 10 (or whatever) ... of course, this would be the most boring review ever written (for the average reader, anyway), so I'll stay away from that, thank you.
So what can be made of this in the interim? Well, for one thing, this isn't exactly ambient, at least not any more than, say, "Augmn" off of Can's Tago Mago is ambient. Ambient, among other things, is supposed to have a calming influence on the listener, and I would be hard-pressed to call large portions of this album calming. Heck, depending on the definition one uses for what is "music," this could easily fall into the category of albums that cross the line of what is and what isn't music; this is, after all, essentially just a sonic show- and-tell. On the other hand, though, it's an extremely interesting listen, and at least on some perverted level I've managed to enjoy it (though on most other levels I really didn't). I'll likely never listen to it again, but I'm glad I've listened to it as many times as I have; it's one of those albums that everybody should hear once in their lives. I give it ***, then, out of sheer respect for how ballsy it was to release an album like this, one more avantgarde than anything yet done by even remotely mainstream (and yes, back in 1973, these two were at least in the "underground mainstream") artists, and the fact that I kinda sorta liked listening to it. Or something along those lines.
SPECIAL COLLABORATOR Retired Admin
Robert Fripp and Brian Eno are both prolific electronic artists, masters of the soundscape and atmospheric layers of sound. Here, on '(No Pussyfooting),' we find their starting point. The two men collaborated in 1973 to create this classic, but overrated, electronic album. Here Fripp was able to find his voice in the electronic world, experimenting with an innovative tape delay technique later dubbed 'Fripptronics,' which is what most of the album is composed of. Brian Eno contributes the backing ambient soundscapes that give the album that atmosphere of exploration and wonder. However, through all the great soundscapes and ambient filling, there isn't much else. The album is composed of two lengthy tracks filled to the brim with ambient noise, little music, and just an interesting use of 40 minutes to remember.
The album' 'opens' with The Heavenly Music Corporation. Massive in length, yet rather shallow in depth, the track has little to its name but some heavenly sounding music. And I'm not saying the music is heavenly, I'm saying it is atmospheric and spacey, and not much else. The interesting use of Fripptronics is a nice introduction to Fripp's later work, but it really is nothing more than a creative jam session by himself. Overall, the song is nothing special, maybe some nice ambient work, but contributes little musically to anything.
Swastika Girls is the second and last track of the album, and present much of the same as the previous track in much the same fashion. Starting with an electronic synth-y section, the 18 minute long track takes even longer to start up than THMC did. This song is more heavily dependent on Eno's keyboard contribution with much less of Fripp's playing present throughout the track. Nearly the entire track is just some peculiar synth noises and bleeps and bloops making for an odd and non-invigorating experience for the listener. Overall, this track really has nothing that special within in except for some interesting soundscapes and synth noises.
ALBUM OVERALL: I'm a fix of whether this album is too complex for comprehension or it legitimately really has nothing special going for it. Ambient-wise, the album could be considered genius, a progenitor in the genre, a masterpiece, and a million other things, but in an actual musical analysis, the album really doesn't hold for anything. The majority of the album is Fripp and Eno jamming with their technologically interesting instruments and making interesting music for druggies who are amazed by little things like a bleep or a weeping guitar. Sadly, not being a stoner myself, I fail to see the genius of this album. It has some really nice soundscapes, but overall seems pretty pointless in the scheme of things. It's an alright album, and I would recommend it only to those dying for classic ambient music. 3- stars.
PROG REVIEWER
This collaboration album, though largely ambient, has a much greater experimental appeal than Eno's solo ambient works, and just enough is happening in the tracks to keep the listener interested while also maintaining an uncluttered, dreamy scape of wonderful electronic drones.
SPECIAL COLLABORATOR Crossover & JR/F/Canterbury Teams
The two tracks both have Eno playing sounds through the dual tape recorder delay process that Fripp later appropriated and dubbed "Frippertronics". Frips adds guitar solos, with lots of long sustained notes, keeping the whole affair from becoming a dreadful bore. This album is only essential if you are a collector of Fripp's guitar solos.
The cover is almost the best part of the album, depicting Fripp & Eno lounging in a mirrored room. Eno is playing with a naughty deck of cards. And is that an illicit substance in powdered lines on that picture frame in front of Fripp? He always seemed like too much of a control freak for that kind of foolishness.
Low three stars.
PROG REVIEWER
The first side of the album, The Heavenly Music Corporation, is the better one, the more prickly Swastika Girls having been recorded later on in a second session to make the album release viable. Superior drone-ambient outings had already emerged from the Krautrock scene in the form of Tangerine Dreams' Zeit and Klaus Schulze's Irrlicht and Cyborg, and whilst the album would prove to be an important turning point in the career of both participants, in some respects the album is more interesting as a technical demonstration revealing the ambient sounds which can be wrought from guitar - typically not an instrument associated with the ambient style - than it is in its own right. Good, but later Fripp & Eno releases would be even better.
COLLABORATOR Honorary Collaborator
The driving force behind the album is a tape loop system developed by Eno which was capable of simultaneous playback and recording. This allowed a performer to hear a loop of his himself while continuing to play on top of it, adding new layers and rhythms in real time. This was not entirely a new idea-Terry Riley had been doing similar things for years-but Eno dubbed the process "Frippertronics" and the name stuck.
The record consists of two side-long tracks, each containing a subtly pulsing backdrop over which Fripp solos extensively. On "The Heavenly Music Corporation," the mood is serene and Fripp's guitar sweeps slowly around with his characteristic warm tones climbing and plunging like dive bombers in slow motion. The effect is lovely and captivating.
Side two, entitled "Swastika Girls," is more active, with heavier focus on Eno's electronics making up the rapidly swirling backdrop. There is a lot more going on here than o the first side, and it takes several listens to take it all in. One of the dangers of this type of recording technique is the tendency for things to become overly cluttered and aurally confusing. I'm not sure whether that quite happens here, but it certainly walks a fine line.
Fans of either Eno's solo work or Fripp's guitar playing (mainly in his capacity as a guest soloist for the likes of David Bowie; there's little resemblance to King Crimson) will find much to love here. The latest reissue is a 2-CD set of good quality and a couple of puzzling choices. First, they broke the side long tracks up into separate parts for the CD indexing, which is totally unnecessary and arbitrary to my way of thinking. Second, the bonus tracks consist of the entire record played backwards and a half speed version of "The Heavenly Music Corporation." The reasons for this remain obscure, but I am forced to admit that the different versions are interesting and enjoyable, if not essential.
PROG REVIEWER
So, to even things out, this is as close as the late, purely electronic music of musicians, like Xenakis or Stockhausen, comes to Prog. Obviously this kind of work fits perfectly under the Progressive/Electronic sub-genre, more than anything else, considering its participants.
Brian Eno has a field day in this kind of non-musical experiments, he was already trying to break out, of all common places in the construction of his music, his "tools" (tapes, synths, recorders, tapes, studio facilities, gadgets, etc, etc...), were in fact already more than tried and tested (remember since 1925). He had at the time (1973) left, to call it somehow, Roxy Music's planet, and was already embarking in his "solo" discography.
On the other hand, Robert Fripp, had to carry with the weight of "exiling" his instrument of choice, the electric guitar, with its perfectly tuned strings to the Central-European, canons of structures, to the unruly world of Droning-Noise.
This was a great first step for the electric guitar kingdom and the court of guitarists that follows. He succeeded, without doubts, and his guitar playing, changed for good and for long. (Yes, there are "solos" and "riffs", but on the un-musical side of noise.)
It is quiet unwise to approach this "No Pussyfooting" effort as a musical effort, just because it is recorded. These are 2 long -timed "Drone-like" compositions, (around 20 minutes each), which are "raw", electronic, non-musical structures, which are constructed in the pure electronic spirit of the early pioneers, but transfixed for the Avant Garde audiophiles of now, by two of the most prolific composers and founders of not only this sub-genre, but of Prog.
WARNING----"To expect "music" is missing the whole trip." *****5 PA stars!
PROG REVIEWER
Latest members reviews
The birth of Ambient music (at least in the established rock environment), as such "No Pussyfooting" will be an interesting album, no matter how much you like it, compared to later ambient albums, by Eno, Fripp or others, due to its inovative place in music history. The album is recorded with ... (read more)
Report this review (#279188) | Posted by tamijo | Saturday, April 24, 2010 | Review Permanlink
I wouldn't rate this if I weren't forced to... Yet, I still do need a tagline... Music-by-numbers-music-by-numbers-music-by-numbers... There's not much to write about the album, If I'm to omit the standard introduction in the likes of: "Eno and Fripp boldly un-pussyfooting" (what's the opposite ... (read more)
Report this review (#267190) | Posted by Mike_Zed | Saturday, February 20, 2010 | Review Permanlink
Listening to this album was quite and interesting experience for me. I have just gotten into Brian Eno and other electronic and ambient music. I will have to say that this album floored me from the very beginning. It is quite varied with the solos that Fripp constructs and the highly textured ... (read more)
Report this review (#195038) | Posted by evantate09 | Friday, December 26, 2008 | Review Permanlink
On No pussyfooting, Brian Eno and Robert Fripp created something magic. The two pieces are very good. The Heavenly Music Corp. is a classic: the keyboards are simple and soft, but the guitar solos are crazy and powerful. Back in 1973, Fripp said in an interview that this song was the best thing h ... (read more)
Report this review (#37356) | Posted by CrimsonTony | Thursday, June 23, 2005 | Review Permanlink
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