Kate, Fripp, "Show of Hands"

[Brian Patrick Arnold <ba0k+@andrew.cmu.edu>]

Kate is God.

With that out of the way, here is my "Show of Hands" review:

Robert Fripp & The League of Crafty Guitarists: "Show of Hands"

If you've never heard the League of Crafty Guitarists before or haven't
heard them in concert, this new CD release of acoustic guitar ensemble
music might blow your mind.  Taking from where King Crimson's
"Discipline" of guitar tapestries left off, the League of Crafty
Guitarists catapult the listener into highly intricate "guitar
orchestra" music.  This is the third and most mature all-ensemble
recording since the LP/CD/Tape "Live!" in '86, and a tape-only release
"Get Crafty I" in '88.  It contains 19 varied pieces performed in the
studio in June of last year.

There are five "Voice Craft" pieces by Patricia Leavitt, whose humorous,
introspective lyrics are sung exceptionally well.  They help much to
break up the seriousness of the guitar pieces so that the listener isn't
overwhelmed.  Only two of the guitar pieces are by Fripp, and all of the
rest are original compositions by the contributing guitarists.

Of the guitar pieces, "Circulation" and "Eye of the Needle" are
re-recordings from "Live!"  However both are remarkably different and
played with greater precision than before.  In fact, "Circulation," a
structured improvisation involving the whole group taking turns playing
a random note and looking at the person who is to play the next note (12
of the 17 guitarists), comes across as a striking, powerfully coherent
yet delicate piece, reflecting the maturity and togetherness of the
ensemble.

Seven of the pieces are re-recordings from "Get Crafty."  For whatever
reasons, they didn't choose to play what I consider the two best pieces
from the tape (namely, "The Breathing Field" and "Intergalactic Boogie
Express"), but what they did re-record is much better than on "Get
Crafty."  Fripp's "The Moving Force" is played by Fripp alone with a
viola, the only non-guitar contribution on the CD.  "Spasm for Juanita"
has both guitarists in the duet playing even more adeptly than on "Get
Crafty," if such a thing could be imagined.  In this piece, one
guitarist sounds like he is really having a musical spasm--their style
of playing indicates that the LoCG are not all mere student "nazi
guitar" robots of Fripp and that many are indeed virtuosos in their own
right, some with exceptional character and style.  "Bicycling to
Afghanistan", "An Easy Way", "Scaling the Whales" and "Chiara" sound
better, but not noticably different than the tape, except "An Easy Way"
has impressively crisp strums, and "Chiara" ends with the 4-note phrase
all by its lonesome again just like the beginning, to make it more
symmetric and "lonely" sounding.

The worst I can say of these re-recorded pieces is that "Askesis" is
still annoying to listen to.  They opened with "Askesis" during their
last two tours.  My best guess is that it's designed to snap the
listener out of the casual, half-asleep, non-listening state we often
find ourselves in, especially at concerts, I'm left jumpy and hyper. 
Fripp has an aphorism "Music is the cup that holds the wine of silence,"
but this cup is holding potent coffee, so watch out.

All five of the new pieces, which they played live during their last
tour, make this CD worth buying regardless of whether you already you
own the tape, the "LIve!" CD, and/or have seen them live.  "A
Connecticut Yankee in The Court of King Arthur" is a bouncy piece with a
classical "renaissance" feel to it that opens up with some of the most
original acoustic guitar sounds I've ever heard, similar to clanking
pots and pans (I distinctly remember being awed by this live, so I know
it's not pots and pans).  It quickly turns raucous with its stops and
starts, spurts of notes, clashing and then suddenly forming deep
harmonic juxtaposition--it is quite fun and funny to listen to.  It also
shows off the virtuosity of some more of the guitarists, especially the
lead part (BTW, few of the pieces on this CD have Fripp contributing a
major role, if any role at all).

"Are you Abel (Ready and Able to Rock 'n' Roll)?", "Hard Times", and
"Burning Siesta" are all exellent new "stereo guitar" pieces.  The
former two have several guitar parts "travel" from the leftmost
guitarist to the rightmost guitarist, reversing direction and jumping
all around.  A way cool use of a bunch of guitars in stereo--this is
intended by the way they sit live in a semi-circle, merely captured well
in the studio.

The guitar pieces end with "Asturias," which will leave you numb. 
"Asturias" alone could be well worth whatever it costs you to buy this
CD.  It begins as a gracefully paced 6:6:4:4 minor key pattern with
several guitars adding to the sound largely from the center until it
changes structure, like that of a gathering storm in a dream and it has
begun to rain.  Then, with guitarists first from the right and then from
the left sides in the ensemble playing notes in a 6/8 middle section,
you can hear some amazing full-bodied harmonics coming from nobody in
the middle, until the lead part quietly makes its comeback and reasserts
the original timing and pattern.  The song, in its clever use of
patterns and harmonics, reminds me of fractals, in the way a pattern
within a bar can be exactly the same as a pattern of occasional notes
spread over several bars, out of synch with the time signature, and how
the chaos of the middle section eventually forms the original patterns
out of itself.  Okay this basically describes the structure of half the
LoCG pieces, but this one stands out as remarkably overwhelming.  It has
a high "weep" factor.  It reminds me of a couple of lines from Patricia
Leavitt's voice craft piece that ends the CD:

"Are there any other choices"
"Than numbness for pain?"
...
"And I wonder"
"Are we really really here"
"To ease God's sorrow?"

- Brian