Three decades since joining forces on No Pussyfooting and The Evening Star, Brian Eno and Robert Fripp are old masters of ambient avant-pop. Their latest collaboration, titled with knowing reference to their shared past, contains seven wordless tracks of celestial self-indulgence and deluxe sonic wank. While Fripp’s guitar noodles and gloops into infinity, Eno adds cinematic chord clusters and icy electronic mist. In purely experimental terms, of course, The Equatorial Stars is the emperor’s old hat. But standout tracks such as “Lyra”and “Tarazed”contain distant echoes of the duo’s superlative instrumental work on David Bowie’s “Heroes”album. Soothing, quietly beautiful, utterly inessential.
Advertisement