Evening Star (album)

Background and recording

This album's recording and the preceding seven show European tour by the duo marked Fripp's first output after disbanding King Crimson and his last before temporarily retiring from music (at the time thought to be permanently) to study at the International Academy for Continuous Education in Sherborne House.

Content

AllMusic described the record as "a less harsh, more varied affair, closer to Eno's then-developing idea of ambient music than what had come before in (No Pussyfooting)". The first three tracks are serene, gentle tape-looped guitar textures performed by Robert Fripp and accented with treatments, synthesizer and piano by Brian Eno. Track four, "Wind on Wind", is a short excerpt from Eno’s solo project Discreet Music, released at roughly the same time as Evening Star. (It is not an exact duplication from that release, being mixed slightly differently.) Eno had originally intended Fripp to use the material which became Discreet Music as a backing tape to play over in improvised live performances.

The second half of the album is a twenty-eight-minute piece of drone music titled "An Index of Metals", in which guitar notes are accumulated in a loop, with distortion increasing as the track progresses.

The album's cover is a painting by the artist Peter Schmidt.

Release

Evening Star was released in December 1975 by record label Island.

Evening Star is the only Fripp album to be released during his retirement.

Legacy

Tracks from this album were used for the music on The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy Primary Phase. Also, "Wind on Water" and "Wind on Wind" were included in the 1983 film Breathless soundtrack.

Track listing

All tracks written by Brian Eno and Robert Fripp, except "Wind on Wind" by Eno.

1. "Wind on Water" – 5:30
2. "Evening Star" – 7:48
3. "Evensong" – 2:53
4. "Wind on Wind" – 2:56

1. "An Index of Metals" – 28:36

Personnel