Fripp & Eno - "Beyond Even 1992-2006"
Hmmm. I bought this expecting the worst...but am pleasantly surprised. The "bits and pieces" factor wasn't as bad as anticipated and it all hangs together enough. The obvious problem, though, is the limited and too familiar palette (which extends to the Russell Mills cover art as well) If you bought Equatorial Stars and thought "Nice! But not brilliant" you can stop there. If you followed Eno through his "squelchy" period and have actually downloaded all the Fripp "bits and pieces" from the DGM site, this will serve as a proper compendium of sorts. Interesting and worth having for fans.
The "bonus disc" with the first pressing is nothing more than a continuously sequenced version of the main disc...a real waste of petroleum IMO.
I was of the same mind regarding this "collection", Mark. Then last December, over the period of a few weeks, I listened to the mp3 samples on
DGM and decided to purchase. I went a slightly different route, however, and grabbed the digital download under the moniker
“The Cotswold Gnomes”. It contains
3 additional tracks, not included on “Beyond Even”:
‘Glass Structure’,
‘Voices’ &
‘Cross Crisis In Lust Storm’). I agree that it is an interesting collection for the Fripp & Eno fan.
I’ve also put a mix together as a sort of “audio review” of the album. I divided the tracks into “slow” and “fast” tracks along with tracks from solo Fripp/solo Eno projects (Exposure, Let the Power Fall, The Drop, The Shutov Assembly, etc) & a few other ambient artists, including Hypnos' resident cellist...the fabulous
Lena!. I'll provide a link to the mix (2 discs) for any who may be interested.
Cotswold Gnome samples can be found here:
http://www.dgmlive.com/archive.htm?show=1099NP: T
he Cotswold Remix, disc one.