The League Of Gentlemen

About

The League of Gentlemen is a recorded music album by Robert Fripp. The music on the album was performed by members of a band which toured Europe and North America throughout 1980 under the name of 'The League of Gentlemen'. The album was released in the UK in 1981 in vinyl format on the Editions EG label. The original album has never been reissued in full on CD, however some tracks are on the abridged Robert Fripp and The League of Gentlemen God Save the King CD release. So the 'League of Gentlemen' was released at a cultural cusp. The band had been positioned by Fripp himself as a "new wave instrumental dance band" which would suggest that he considered the music produced by the band to be 'New wave' in character. Commentators have pointed to the rawness of the production as significant in so far as this approach had been popular among producers of post-punk/New wave recordings of the time. It may be that Robert Fripp was seeking to make his music fit to the prevailing 'alternative' style of the time or it may simply be a reflection of the speed with which the record was recorded and released at the end of an exhausting tour. Whatever the motivation or the underlying reasons the music seems to fit well with the Post-punk scene, a feeling which is only re-inforced by the socio-political messaging laid over the tracks in the form of vocal samples. The musical backbone of the album is the spiky and complex interaction between guitar and keyboards and the repetitive and gradually developing nature of the melodic themes to which the bass and drums provide an easy to dance to 4/4 beat (Fripp stated repeatedly that the League of Gentlemen was a dance band, and at gigs a section of empty floor space was sometimes reserved so that audience members had an area in which to dance).

via Last.fm

The Clerk says

Start your shelf to read the full take →