Robert Fripp - 1985-07-18 Manchester, UK (1985)

1985 proved to be a significant year in Fripp’s personal and professional life, marking as it did the founding of Guitar Craft and the development of a slightly different take on Frippertronics.

One year and a week after King Crimson had played its final gig in Montreal, Fripp undertook a short tour of in-store performances of record stores in Liverpool, York and London, with a couple of promotional appearances on local Radio.

Unlike his previous solo outings, here he’s abandoned his trusty Revox tape recorders and opted for an Electro-Harmonix Memory Man providing him with a 16 second delay to play with.

There’s a touching vulnerability to this performance for Manchester’s Piccadilly Radio, where the Roland guitar synthesiser settings have a tremolo effect that sounds almost koto-like. A delicate, fragile improvisation with a rhapsodic flurry in the final ten minutes.

Robert Fripp - Guitar