Andy Summers and Robert Fripp: I Advance Masked and Bewitched

At first it sounded like an odd match—the guitarist for a popular mainstream band facing off against the same for one of rock’s most challenging—but taken down to the basic details, it makes sense that Andy Summers and Robert Fripp would be so compatible. There were enough precedents in both the Police and King Crimson to show their similarities, and tendencies to create textures and spit out staccato solos. (They’re about the same age, too, Andy the older by three years. He’d also played in a whole slew of esoteric outfits before the Police got him.)

I Advance Masked is a true duet, each track compositionally credited to both, playing alternately dizzying runs up and down necks and exploring the capabilities of the guitar synthesizer. Being entirely instrumental, the titles suggest various moods, sometimes beautifully, as with “Girl On A Swing”, where a gentle piano dances around an acoustic guitar while a birdlike melody soars back and forth. “Painting And Dance” presents a nice little chamber piece, and tracks like “Under Bridges Of Silence”, “The Truth Of Skies”, and “In The Cloud Forest” contain enough Frippertronics to create moods. There are enough uptempo pieces to keep it from being entirely impressionistic; the title track (which builds on “The Zero Of The Signified” from Under Heavy Manners and shares some constructive elements with “Neurotica” from Beat) is particularly edgy, a tension that continues on the percussive “New Marimba”. “Hardy Country” also provides a change in dynamic, just as “Stultified” ends the album with a set of precisely played dissonant figures.

While not a smash hit, and little promotion considering their commitments to their main bands, a follow-up still materialized. Bewitched isn’t simply more of the same, mostly because it’s more of a Summers album than a full collaboration with Fripp, as the writing credits make plain. The album was split between a “dance” side, which adds a real rhythm section, albeit with electronic-sounding drums but also Sara Lee from the League Of Gentlemen on bass, and a “dream” side, which is much more contemplative as well as satisfying. Once again the titles try to be descriptive (“Begin The Day”, “Parade”, “Forgotten Steps”, “Train”, the title track), and while “What Kind Of Man Reads Playboy” is upbeat, reminiscent of Fripp’s “discotronics” period, at ten minutes it tends to drag. When the album works best, the notion of Brian Eno mixing an ECM album isn’t so alien.

Having limited themselves to two albums, a 90-minute Maxell conveniently contains both nicely, and even worth having on continual auto-reverse. If Police fans found their way here, they could well have graduated to King Crimson via a back door. More directly, the albums give the listener a chance to hear Fripp’s current style unadorned by the Levin/Bruford rhythm section, nor particularly Adrian Belew. They also raise Andy’s profile a bit, giving him a chance to step out of Sting’s shadow.

Forty years later, while Fripp was methodically and painstakingly upgrading and reissuing his life’s work, the Summers and Fripp albums hovered on the perimeter. Then Andy found a bunch of tapes that had been forgotten, enabling the compilers of The Complete Recordings 1981-1984 to present both albums in new mixes by David Singleton. The differences are subtle; the piano on “Girl On A Swing” is more pronounced, while “Parade” has some chatter under the intro and comes to a complete ending instead of being faded. Each of the albums got bonus tracks—alternate mixes mostly, plus the furious tracks “Brainstorm II” and the dreamier “Balinese”—as well as another disc’s worth of outtakes. Mother Hold The Candle Steady was compiled from sketches of ideas for both albums into finished compositions, plus alternate takes of “Parade” and “Maquillage”. Some of these new tricks are very nice, but then there’s the wacky carnival atmosphere of “Foi Um Optimo Dia”, complete with a chorus of happy revelers. The title track shares its name with that of an improvisation on Crimson live album), and “Step N’ Fetchit” is a remake of an Exposure outtake. Rounding out the disc is a half-hour of excerpts from Fripp’s cassettes of their writing sessions and conversations under the title “Can We Record Tony?” (The full “audio documentary” is included on a Blu-ray disc, along with original, new, and surround mixes of the three albums.)

Andy Summers/Robert Fripp I Advance Masked (1982)—4
Andy Summers/Robert Fripp Bewitched (1984)—3
Andy Summers and Robert Fripp The Complete Recordings 1981-1984 (2025)—3½