Robert Fripp, The League Of Crafty Guitarists

condition (record/cover): EX / EX

By 1985 Robert Fripp had reorganised his post-Discipline work around a teaching programme he called Guitar Craft, founded that year at the American Society for Continuous Education at Claymont Court in West Virginia. Out of those week-long intensive courses emerged The League Of Crafty Guitarists: an ensemble that could swell to thirty or more guitarists, all using Fripp's "New Standard Tuning" (CGDAEG), all reading interlocking parts at high speed. Live! (1986) is the first commercial document of this ensemble, recorded across early concerts in the United States and Britain in 1985 and 1986.

The music is unlike anything else in the Editions EG catalog. "Asturias" sets twenty-plus acoustic guitars in motion through a single tonal centre, the parts staggered so that the whole sounds like a slow-rotating sphere. "Tight Spot In Newburyport" is a relay of solos within a rigid pulse. "Wild Side Of The Crafty Disciplined" lives up to its title, the players cycling between unison and counterpoint with unnerving precision. Throughout, Fripp himself plays alongside students rather than directing them; the conductor's role belongs to the music itself.

The original vintage Editions EG pressing on EGED 43, distributed by Virgin, gatefold with the Guitar Craft documentation inside. Live! would be followed by Live II and Show Of Hands; the League Of Crafty Guitarists remains active in various configurations to this day. An early record for any subsequent guitar orchestra (think Glenn Branca or Rhys Chatham transposed to acoustic instruments) and the quietest of Fripp's late-1980s statements.