Product Description
2 the sky below 4:32
3 a temple in the clouds 30:59
4 the stars below 3:30
From 2000: A stunning album of looped Frippertronics and electronics, in the vein of the classic Fripp & Eno No Pussyfooting collaboration.
Recorded live from a past life. Awash in the hypnotic looping structures of Robert Fripp’s guitar soundscapes, Jeffrey Fayman adds an opulent cinematic brilliance to the proceedings, creating an intense and dramatic vision of a future rich in the heritage of Fripp’s past.
A Temple In The Clouds is a unique collaboration between one of rock’s most important and influential guitarists and a contemporary cinematic composer. Fripp’s contribution of two hours worth of treated guitar work (his trademark “Frippertronics”) formed the basis for Fayman’s layering of interwoven electronic soundscapes. Focusing on the subtleties and slight shifts in overtones and harmonics, Fayman & Fripp have created a dynamic musical kaleidoscope, ever changing and intrinsically radiant in each sonic fractal.
AmbientVisions: “A Temple in the Clouds is a spiritual and euphoric soundscape by Jeffrey Fayman and Robert Fripp(!). A glorious album of Frippertronics and contemplative sound sculptures. The sheer spirituality of their experiences shines in this ethereal ambience and insightful minimalism. The joy and beauty of the soul is touched. Piercing rays of bright and unfettered emotion overshadow the dark undertones. This disc is a spiritual journey.”
More details:
The Soundscapes of Jeffrey Fayman & Robert Fripp. A stunning album of looped Frippertronics and electronics, in the vein of the classic Fripp & Eno No Pussyfooting collaboration; released in conjunction with Jeffrey Fayman’s Tranceportation imprint.
Artist Background
Jeffrey Fayman’s background is in film music, having scored and licensed music for over 1500 diverse trailers including the current campaigns for “The Hollow Man,” “The Perfect Storm,” & “The Patriot.” His company, “Immediate Music” is one of the premier music production companies for motion picture advertising in Los Angeles.
Studying percussion and world music in college, Jeffrey eventually abandoned academic studies to pursue life as a drummer in various progressive bands (he recorded an album, Empire, with ex-Yes founding guitarist Peter Banks) before taking up the synthesizers in the early eighties. As he explains, “I soon realized I could use computer software and synthesizers to musically express complex pieces I was hearing inside and correct my poor keyboard technique.” Robert Fripp is the leader of the legendary art rock band King Crimson. Thoughout the seventies and eighties, he toured the world with his ever-changing ensemble. His collaborations with Brian Eno in the early seventies could arguably be referred to as the beginning of “ambient music.” 1973’s No Pussyfooting and 1975’s Evening Star defined a new realm of music, bringing a strategic looping structure – “Frippertronics” – to the world. While continuing with King Crimson, Fripp has released a series of albums in a similar vein — called “Soundscapes” — on his own Discipline Global Mobile label.
In the early nineties, a band Jeffrey founded and produced sent their demo tape to Robert, who said “I should play on that.” Fripp flew out to Los Angeles and performed on four tracks. Although Jeffrey eventually left the project behind, a resulting “gift” from Robert was a master tape containing two hours of Frippertronic Soundscapes recorded in Jeffrey’s studio which, (paraphrasing Fripp’s words), “you might utilize in whatever context you feel would be appropriate.”
Jeffrey details the story from there: “I had Robert’s tape sitting around for nearly eight or nine years and then I developed the idea of employing these Frippertronics as a method of creating atmospheric textures for lucid dreaming. Robert’s Soundscapes always seemed to help restore and heal my energy and concentration, so simply as personal experimentation, I layered several of them together and created complex interweaving atmospheres. I would then just sit in my studio and listen to them cycle for long periods of time.
“Focusing on the subtleties, I began hearing slight shifts in overtones and harmonics; my ear would follow one section of a loop for a while, and then become inadvertently drawn to another element which seemed to then be quite obvious, though I never seemed to have heard that part before… I soon realized they were causing some powerful effects upon my psyche.
“In listening to them, I began having very visual impressions and I started re-structuring and shaping the Soundscapes by editing and eventually adding my own instrumentation. My biggest problem in mixing them was to keep my concentration solid and to remember to move the mixing faders when needed, and to not be so pulled in, that I just sat there blankly staring at the speakers.
“What you hear on the CD A Temple in the Clouds is the result of much sonic and psychic experimentation, generous offerings and encouragement by Mr. Fripp, travels to healing temples in Greece, lucid dreaming, and defining those visions by utilizing Soundscapes.”
Reviews editor –
A review from Ambient Visions
A Temple in the Clouds is a spiritual and euphoric soundscape by Jeffrey Fayman and Robert Fripp (!). Robert is an ambient icon and experimenter extraordinaire. He has merged his visionary expertise with Jeff’s ample talents. (Jeff is an experienced musical veteran, more known for his advertising work.) The result is a glorious album of Frippertronics and contemplative sound sculptures. Anapraxis, a temple on a small Mediterranean island, and its mythology provided the inspiration for the project. Robert and Jeff visited there in 1992. The sheer spirituality of their experiences shines in this ethereal ambience and insightful minimalism. The joy and beauty of the soul is touched. Piercing rays of bright and unfettered emotion overshadow the dark undertones. This disc is a spiritual journey on a par with Constance Demby’s heavenly journeys.
Reviewed by Jim Brenholts
Reviews editor –
A review from Satan Stole My Teddybear
A Temple in the Clouds is the culmination of a musical collaboration that began nearly nine years ago between legendary King Crimson leader Robert Fripp and noted film musician Jeffrey Fayman, whose credits include music for the trailers of “A Perfect Storm” and “The Patriot”. The nucleus of the music project came in the form of some tracks Fripp had performed on years ago for a different band Fayman was involved with. Nothing came of that but the master tapes languished away for years until Fayman came up with an idea of how to layer and cycle the “Frippertronic Soundscapes” into this very unusual outcome.
The long soundscapes created on this album are rather amazing. While the instruments that may have been used are synthesized or otherwise processed into something not quite immediately recognizable, the depth of the layers as well as the fluid nature of the resulting music is phenomenal. I have described this CD to friends as “music the ocean would make were it to get its hands on a studio and some instruments”. The music moves in ebbs, tides and flows. Initially it might seem mildly repetitive, yet the tones wash over you in the most serene manner possible and actually have the ability to gradually ease your state of mind into a more placid state of consciousness. The thirty minute title track is a perfect example of expansive soundscapes that betray the actual time it takes to listen to the track. Rather, time and place are irrelevant and the sounds you hear take charge. Percussionless and very abstract, A Temple in the Clouds avoids entirely the typical ambient charade of thinly layered keyboards as this is dynamic and breathing. This is definitely one of the best soundscape/ambient records I’ve ever come across.
Review by John Chedsey
Review date: 08/2000
Reviews editor –
A review from CMJ New Music Monthly Oct 2000
Reviews editor –
Reviews from the King Crimson website, elephant-talk.com:
By: Dima Kanashenko
“A dense Soundscapes album, brighter than “GoP” and more composed (-sounding), with subtle samples of wind, crashing waves, chimes and pitched vocals.”
Date Submitted: 27-Aug-01
By: Alexander Pieri (aleksander.pieri at pu dot hinet dot hr)
“It`s an amazing Cd!!! The first sounds bring me to an immaginarian civilisation which use a solar energy as their primary resource. That Cd now gave me a complete rays of ideas to write….”
Reviews editor –
A review from All About Jazz
Robert Fripp is like a box of chocolates. One minute he’s the evil scientist pumping out some of the most intense and disturbing metal ever recorded with the boys in King Crimson, and the next minute he’s a new age disciple using his guitar to create incredibly soothing and “healing” textures. A Temple in the Clouds – a collaboration with keyboardist Jeffrey Fayman – would fall in the latter camp as it is a collection of Fripp’s patented “Soundscapes” mixed in with Fayman’s keyboards stylings and some ambient outdoor sounds. If the goal of the music (actually, calling it music is a stretch – “ambient backgrounds” would be more appropriate) is to put the listener in almost a meditative trance-like state, A Temple in the Clouds succeeds on every level. After listening to this CD multiple times, I literally felt as if every muscle in my body had called out sick and gone to Tahiti.
PLEASE NOTE THAT THIS ITALIC TEXT IS ALL WRONG: According to the liner notes, in 1992 Fripp and Fayman took a pilgrimage to the Greek temple of Anapraxis (along with three tons of recording equipment) with the idea of hopefully capturing some of the mystique of ancient Greece on tape. The sounds captured there – along with some samples from Fripp’s Let the Power Fall, – comprise the four tracks on A Temple in the Clouds. Musically speaking, the tracks are mostly exercises in patience and subtlety – the slow chord changes take you from Point A to Point B without really allowing you to remember how you got there. Fripp’s guitar acts as the foundation for the CD, while Fayman colors in the spaces with sweeping synthesizers that lend an almost ominous tone to the tracks. The prime example of this eeriness is the 30-minute title track – by the time I was 10 minutes into the track I was definitely completely relaxed, but there was also a residual feeling of something not quite being right.
So if your interest lies in Fripp’s guitar chops and “traditional” song structure, you won’t be happy here. But, if you’re looking for ambient sounds that patch directly into the very essence of what you are, then look no further than A Temple in the Clouds. I guarantee that no matter how stressed and anxious you may feel from the mundane day-to-day existence on planet Earth, spending an hour Fripp and Fayman will put your mind and body at ease – and in these hectic and fast-paced times an experience like A Temple in the Clouds is priceless.