On 08-18-96 CLARK RAY wrote to KENNETH NEWMAN... 
 
 CR> Actually, I quite like _Islands_ except for the "The Letters." 
 
        FWIW, I love _Islands_. I think it's a wretchedly bad 
        album, in poor taste. No, that's too mild. It's in 
        egregiously execrable heinous bad taste, a taste Dunkirk, 
        a taste Jonestown, a free-floating disaster of a taste 
        tragedy. Part of what makes it so exquisite is the 
        unself-consciousness of the bad taste, which truly sends 
        it into hochkitsch. I'll probably go to hell for liking 
        it, but I can't resist. 
 
        "Gulls" is like some monstrous Prog Ketelby, oddly 
        appropriate to the Dorset area where Fripp is from, and 
        still is for that matter, though that's more of an 
        explanation than an excuse. It's sentimental, rigidly 
        formal, unsophisticated yet pretentious, tedious, and 
        treacly mawkish sweet, but too innocent to be called 
        twee. In short, the piece is Fripp personified, at least 
        back when he had a 'fro. 
 
        I love Boz's lisping enunciation of Sinfield's lyrics. No 
        one else IMO ever really captured the lisping gestalt of 
        Sinfield's stuff like Boz, the non-singing, 
        non-bass-playing yobbo (I love the single name, so Old 
        Testament) that Fripp created to sing and play bass in 
        his hippy band. And yet the bass playing is oddly 
        compelling, especially on "Sailor's Tale" but it's 
        similarly interesting on other cuts if you listen 
        closely. Wallace does as good an imitation of Giles as 
        Collins does of McDonald. Perhaps the best playing is 
        from the sidemen that Fripp knew from the Centipede 
        project: Harry Miller, Keith Tippett, Marc Charig,etc. 
 
        All in all a beautiful experience. But don't quote me on 
        that. The definitive edition CD sounds great, BTW, better 
        than the 8 track. :-) 
 
                                Cheers, 
                                Kenneth 
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