Robert Fripp to Compose Vista's Soundtrack

brainstem writes "Recently, King Crimson founder, guitar master, and all around eccentric musical genius Robert Fripp spent a few days at the MS Campus recording soundscapes for Vista. Fripp, who has been at the forefront of electronic guitar composition for more than 35 years, first using analog tape delays, then with digital effects. He infused his unique brand of Frippertronics on the MS crowd. The Channel 9 site has posted a 25 minute video, chronicalling the event. Now I guess I finally have a reason to leave the default Windows sounds enabled."

Comments

Re:Fripp? nah, Something with a kick please!

[Weird O'Puns]

Something with a kick?

Perhaps you should listen the latest stuff from King Crimson. Hell, go and check out Red and keep in mind that it was done in the 70's.

Now, I must go back to listening Strapping Young Lad and Opeth....

Re:Interesting choice...

[pyota]

i recalled this interesting interview snippet with eno regarding why he agreed to the project:

The thing from the agency said, "We want a piece of music that is inspiring, universal, blah- blah, da-da-da, optimistic, futuristic, sentimental, emotional," this whole list of adjectives, and then at the bottom it said "and it must be 3 1/4 seconds long." I thought this was so funny and an amazing thought to actually try to make a little piece of music. It's like making a tiny little jewel. In fact, I made 84 pieces. I got completely into this world of tiny, tiny little pieces of music. I was so sensitive to microseconds at the end of this that it really broke a logjam in my own work. Then when I'd finished that and I went back to working with pieces that were like three minutes long, it seemed like oceans of time.

The Gates of Paradise?

[stardancer]

This can also be noted: (from krimson-news.com) "Microsoft's Steve Ball (better known to many KN readers as member of the League of Crafty Guitarists) was also in attendance and provided some good comments on the significance of sound themes--and Fripp's soundscapes--to the user experience."

The League of Crafty Guitarists is "the performance wing of Guitar Craft", and Guitar Craft is Robert Fripp's guitar school-thingy. So, the circle is complete.

Anyway. Now at least we know that the sounds in Vista will be nice. That's good. I'm a little worried though, that perhaps the Blue Screen of Death will become Red and "One More Red Nightmare" is blasted out your speakers every time an error/BSOD occurs!

What's scarier is the fact that Robert Fripp's soundscape album from 1997 (not his only soundscape album, no) is so aptly titled "The Gates of Paradise"! amazon link

And perhaps the song titles of that album can give us a hint as to how Fripp feels about mr. Gates:
"The Outer Darkness"
"Abandonment to Divine Providence"
"In Fear And Trembling Of The Lord"
"Acceptance"

I mean, since Microsoft/Gates does rule the universe, or at least one might think that Fripp believes so, we here have a possible explanation to why he agreed to make this Vista "soundtrack"/soundscape/whatever... The other possible explanation is obvious: Fripp likes money.

not the first time he has "sold out"

[justins]

People might have heard Fripp or Crimson music in a Gilette commercial, on The Maxx cartoon on Liquid Television, or in some porn movie that stole the music. (Fripp sued them to get royalties) With regards to the commercial, I know he said something to the effect of "Why not? I use their razors, and people will get to hear something a lot better than the music they ordinarily use in those things. And I can use the money."

As a Fripp fan who will probably end up using Vista at some point I'm cautiously optimistic about this. I'm also skeptical that the little noises an OS makes can have any musical quality whatsoever.