This 1982 meeting between Police guitarist Andy Summers and his colleague Robert Fripp of King Crimson may seem surprising at first glance. But the two string experts had known each other since the 1960s in Bournemouth, where Fripp had taken over Summers’ position as guitarist in the Bournemouth Majestic Hotel Band. In the early eighties, the friends used a break between recording and touring with their bands to see what they could come up with in the studio.
It’s all instrumental, hardly rock in the strictest sense – here and there a stripped-down drum machine, otherwise they limit themselves to guitars, guitar synthesizer, synthesizer, bass and sparse percussion. The repetitive figures often result in a hybrid affair between prog and ambient, more like mood pictures than groove-driven numbers. Fripp mostly does what he does so well, including extended Frippertronics loops – in the title track “I Advance Masked” he even quotes a motif from the King Crimson song “Neurotica”. But the use of Summers also fits in with his later work with Police, from flat, digitally distorted sounds to odd beats, which he would return to in the Police song “Mother”.
An incredibly good and unique side project – their second album Bewitched (1984) was more pop again. The duo’s complete recordings are also available on CD, but this album remains their highlight.
