Andy Summers-Robert Fripp- I Advance Masked

Having crossed paths briefly in the ’60s in Bournemouth where Fripp took over Andy’s guitar chair in the band at Bournemouth’s Ma­jestic Hotel, it wasn’t until 1981 – when Summers wrote to Fripp – that the two guitarists would work together.

With a very different sounding 1980s King Crimson lineup on tour and The Police’s status as one of the biggest acts in the world, it’s unsurprising that an album of guitar duets from Sumeers/Fripp – despite being as far apart from the concept of ‘guitar hero’ playing as possible to imagine, proved intriguing enough to spend several weeks in the US Billboard 200 charts.

This year sees a newly compiled release ‘The Complete Recordings 1981–1984’ by Andy Summers and Robert Fripp on 3CD/1Blu-ray. Alongside this, a new 2024 David Singleton mix of ‘I Advance Masked’ will be released on 200-gram vinyl including 2 previously unreleased tracks ‘Skyline’ and ‘Entropy Pulse’.

On the multitrack tapes for both ‘I Advance Masked’ and ‘Bewitched’, there were a large number of unfinished tracks. With ‘Skyline’ and ‘Entropy Pulse’, Fripp (on ‘Skyline’) and Summers (on ‘Entropy Pulse’) had played numerous part-complete solos. According to Singleton, this left him “with the wonderful task, now very simple in a digital world, of making a coherent backing and then combining and switching between the various solos to create the “duets” that you now hear”.

Track Listing:
1: I Advance Masked
2: Under Bridges of Silence
3: China - Yellow Leader
4: In the Cloud Forest
5: New Marimba
6: Girl On a Swing
7: Hardy Country
8: The Truth of Skies
9: Painting and Dance
10: Still Point
11: Lakeland/Aquarelle
12: Seven On Seven
13: Stultified
14: Entropy Pulse
15: Skyline