Today’s Vinyl: Fripp & Eno

The great thing about ambient music is its broad application - it’s equally appealing to the massively stoned college student looking for a 3am freakout-stopper as it is to an aging, stressed-out technology guy trying to keep from physically threatening the next customer who calls him talking about how they really want a more “Web 2.0-ish” design for their next web store. At least, that’s the theory. Auditory Paxil for the angry masses.

Brian Eno popularized this genre of music with his ambient series, but this 1975 platter, Evening Star, probably represents the nexus of that sound. Eno and Robert Fripp collaborated on guitar, tape loops and synths to produce a repetitive, generative sound where rhythm and time were largely tossed out in favor of tone and texture. This is not Music for Airports by any stretch; the second side’s 28-minute long An Index of Metals is sinister and dark, like a slow jam for evil robot sex or a soundtrack to one of those paramecium films you watched in high school. Remember when the virus started mutating and dividing in the original Andromeda Strain? This should have been the backing track.

The first side is brighter, but isn’t necessarily going to make the playlist of the local upscale birthing suite. The title track hints at that chilled-out, pastoral sound that would dominate Eno’s ambient series, yet this is still experimental music, and there are no simple, downbeat rhythms here to relax your harried shopping experience.

I came to this record via Fripp instead of Eno; as a young prog nut, I devoured King Crimson and then went on to dig up everything Fripp did on the side. This is beautiful stuff and still well worth a listen if you can track it down. You can stream the album in what appears to be an unauthorized mySpace profile of the record here.