Robert Fripp in 2026 (photo: Tom Pinnock).

To mark the occasion, DGM presents Fripp@80: a year-long series of weekly digital releases drawn from Fripp’s extensive catalogue of solo recordings and collaborative works across 6 decades of a professional career that began on his 21st birthday in 1967. Alongside the musical selections, there are new commentaries and reflections, offering fresh insights and stories behind the music.

We learn from the series Introduction, in conversation with David Singleton, that it was in 1961 that Robert first climbed into a van to go to a gig with his original Bournemouth beat group, The Ravens, with friends Gordon Haskell on bass, Tino Licinio, rhythm guitar and Graham Whale on drums. 

In the first release we catch a glimpse of the Bournemouth Beat Scene where Robert’s guitar playing career began. A previously unheard recording of an original composition by The League of Gentlemen, c.1964, sets the scene before a rip-roaring blast of punk rock’n’roll re-introduces us to a guitarist who has achieved international acclaim, already broken up King Crimson (for the first time), been on a year’s sabbatical at J.G Bennett’s IACE and is then re-emerging in 1978 as a small mobile unit, residing in New York City. Look out for new releases every friday, and follow the playlist on Spotify.

Many have followed Robert’s writings in his album sleeve notes, a notable series of Musician magazine articles in the 80s, his diaries here at dgmlive, and his own book The Guitar Circle, published in 2022.  Today, Robert launches a new substack that will feature selections from the above and more. Follow or subscribe to receive updates. robertfripp.substack.com

Robert at the Marquee on his 23rd birthday.

Another birthday of note for the working player came in 1969, as King Crimson made its debut at the Marquee in London, supporting Steppenwolf, the prelude to a nine-week residency at the club that would help establish the band in its meteoric first year. The guitarist turned 23 that day, and a week later appeared in a photograph in the International Times, alongside a glowing review, “King Crimson are the most beautiful, tight, original group to emerge on the British scene in at least two years”.

Robert Fripp with the Orchestra of Crafty Guitarists, April 24, 2026 (photo: Walter Rovere).

Though no longer getting in and out of vans as much as he used to, the self-described former working player recently led a performance of the Orchestra of Crafty Guitarists at Castione Della Presolana in Italy. In what he has long recognised to be his real work, Robert will be continuing to direct further Guitar Craft courses. Registration is now open for: An Introduction To Guitar Craft & The Guitar Circle with Robert Fripp to be held at Villa Sancelso in November. 

Robert and Toyah on their wedding day in 1986.

It's a double celebration today as, on another birthday of significance, it was 40 years ago that Robert married Toyah in the Fripp family village of Witchampton in Dorset. Also on that day, the sale was completed on Red Lion House in Cranborne, the new Fripp marital home and future home of Guitar Craft, 1986 - 1989.

And if all that isn’t enough excitement in matters Fripp-related, dgmlive is also releasing a regular series from the Exposure Sessions recorded mainly in New York in 1978, with a new download available on Monday.

Upbeat Moments. Saturday at 18:00 GMT...

A vintage Sunday Lunch. Sunday at 12:00 GMT...

Robert Fripp will be 80 on 16th May 2026. To celebrate this, DGM is curating a Fripp@80 series, with weekly digital releases throughout the year drawn from his extensive solo and collaborations work from his wide-ranging and innovative career. Expect new insights and hidden gems as Robert Fripp and David Singleton add commentaries to many of the tracks. 

Download here: 

or listen on the official Robert Fripp YouTube channel:

Accompaying Words 1 this Saturday...

Today at 18:00 GMT...

Tomorrow at 12:00 GMT...

Release date: July 10, 2026.

The original live mixes enhanced from the multitracks recordings, showcase the band’s electric four-night run in September 2014 on 2 CDs or 2 LPs.

For King Crimson, New York was never just a tour-stop – it was a recurring stage in the band’s mythology. Starting with the 1969 Fillmore East breakthrough and running through those early-’70s returns, climaxing in the Larks’-era farewell to that chapter at Central Park in 1974. 

And when Crimson kept mutating, the city kept calling them back. Robert Fripp later pointed to the six shows at the Savoy in 1981 (after rehearsals tucked away in the garment district) as a high-water mark, and later line-ups - the Double Trio, Double Duo, and a 2008 quintet with newly recruited Gavin Harrison at the Nokia Theatre  continued the Manhattan connection, right up to a major reset at the same venue (by then the Best Buy Theatre) in 2014.

That 2014 band looked like nothing else on the circuit: three drummers lined up across the front - an idea Fripp described as a sudden “point of seeing - turning rhythm into a moving, interlocked engine”. 

Crucially, they didn’t treat the back catalogue like museum pieces; they played it as living material, rebuilt with microscopic attention rather than copied note-for-note. The “drumsons” delivered a choreographed surge and uncanny unity (Harrison joked it felt like “one drummer with six legs and six arms”), and a calmer group chemistry let the seven-piece hit with brute force and fine detail at once - refreshing older classics and giving newer pieces extra muscle. 

In New York, moments like Starless, framed with a deliberate red-light nod to 1974, landed as proof that Crimson could honour its past without slipping into nostalgia: a band that kept reinventing its own language, still pushing forward with no obvious limit.

From 2014 to 2021 King Crimson played music that was, in keeping with Robert Fripp's approach, "new whenever it is performed", freshly minted each night for a new audience to hear. The band would frequently stay in one city for more than one night so that demand for tickets could be met while still appearing in venues where all of the audience could both see and hear fully. 

2014 NYC is the beginning of a new series (to be released on 2LP and 2CD), compiled from those runs of concerts at a single venue/city and commences from the first year of touring with a set taken from the band's four-night run in NYC in September 2014. 

Later this year (Autumn 2026), there will be a 2 x Blu-ray release of King Crimson’s entire 19-date U.S. tour from 2014 which will also include this compilation. 

KCLPX2014 - 2LP 200-gram vinyl set

Side A 

Introductory Soundscape
Larks’ Tongues in Aspic (Part I)
Pictures of a City   

Side B 

Side C 

Side D 

VROOOM
Coda: Marine 475
The Light of Day
21st Century Schizoid Man

DGM5033 – 2CD 

CD1 

1. Introductory Soundscape
2. Larks’ Tongues in Aspic (Part I)  
3. Pictures of a City
4. A Scarcity of Miracles
5. Banshee Legs Bell Hassle
6. Level Five
7. The Letters
8. The Sailor’s Tale 
9. Interlude
10. The ConstruKction of Light
11. Red

CD2 

1. One More Red Nightmare
2. VROOOM
3. Coda: Marine 475
4. The Light of Day
5. The Talking Drum
6. Larks’ Tongues in Aspic (Part II)
7. Starless
8. The Hell Hounds of Krim 
9. Improv: Hoodoo
10. 21^st Century Schizoid Man 

King Crimson 2014 (photo: Scarlet Page).

A large part of the DGM Archive is taken up by the tape store. With the vast majority of the King Crimson and Fripp-related masters and multitracks already digitised, we rarely need to return to the original tapes for audio—except, of course, when we do. Then it is a matter of baking tapes (to drive out moisture to prevent the tapes shedding oxide when played) and finding a suitable machine to play them on, which almost always means outsourcing. Over the years, many digital formats have come and gone; some items once central to our everyday work now gather dust on the shelf or are filed away in drawers. Despite all the innovations in digital storage, the bottom line remains: analogue tapes are still by far the most reliable medium for preserving master recordings.

1. U-matic (1971)

Introduced by Sony in September 1971, a 3/4 inch magnetic tape cassette. This was a professional analogue video format widely used in the TV broadcast industry, where it replaced 16mm film as the news gathering medium of choice in the mid 70s. It was reliable, easy to use and provided instant playback, a significant advantage over film, which required processing. It employed a rotating head helical scan mechanism, which allowed more information to be written to a piece of tape than the previous linear serpentine method of data storage used on reel-to-reel tapes with mainframe computers. With a PCM adaptor audio could be saved to tape as a pseudo video signal, and it became the industry standard for delivering CD masters. It is also one of the reasons for the 44.1kHz sample rate standard being adopted for CD audio, as it simply carried over from the rate used for writing data to U-matic tape, chosen as it was compatible with the number of lines and frame rates of both of the video standards, NTSC (North America) and PAL (Europe). U-matic was never a format that could be played at DGM, it was solely for delivering the audio master to the CD replication plant. This example contains The Cheerful Insanity of Giles Giles and Fripp for the CD edition released by Decca Records in 1992 with the catalogue number 820 965-2.

2. Beta (Betamax) (1975)

It lost the battle with VHS to become the standard video cassette format for the consumer market, but was the preferred choice of professionals because of its higher resolution and reliability and replaced the U-matic in the television industry. It became an audio mastering format when Sony introduced the PCM-F1 which used pulse code modulation to convert the digital data to video signal, David Singleton recalls having one of these when he was operating his mobile studio in the 80s. This example, from Marcus Studios in London, contains a compilation of tracks including alternate takes from Exposure, remixed by Brad Davis in 1983 for eventual release as the album’s ‘Second Edition’ on LP and cassette in 1985. Could we play this one now? No. As with most of the other formats here, the hardware is no longer in working order.

3.  3.5” Floppy Disc (1983)

Holding 1.44Mb, there isn’t enough storage for much more than a set of sleevenotes on one of these or a few low-resolution JPEGs. Ubiquitous in any office that had a personal computer in the 80s, it was a thin flexible disc with a magnetic coating, housed in a plastic enclosure. Its days are not completely done, surprisingly it's still finding a use in the aviation and military sectors, for example, the remaining Boeing 747-400 Jumbo jets in service still apparently use 3.5” floppies to update their avionics software. Our office relic was once used (and re-used) to transfer sleeve notes between computers at DGM, including text for The League of Crafty Guitarists - Live and A Blessing of Tears. 

4. Exabyte (8mm Data8) (1987)

A computer data storage tape, now discontinued, widely used for backup and archiving throughout the late 1980s and 1990s. Based on 8mm video cassette technology, it similarly used a helical scan recording method. It required a dedicated tape drive such as the EXB-8200. For a while DGM backed up masters to Exabyte. This one contains a 1993 edition of In The Court of The Crimson King from Virgin/EG Records.

5. SyQuest Disc (1986)

A removable hard disc widely used in the graphic design industry, and also used in music for audio backup and sampling. This example contains Quark Xpress and Photoshop files for the inlay and CD label artwork for Thrakattak, designed by Bill Smith Studio in 1996. The disc holds a whopping 44Mb, which meant another disc was required to contain the CD booklet. It became obsolete the moment Zip disc arrived. Like regular computer hard drives it was best not to drop these. 

6. DAT (Digital Audio Tape/DDS) (1987/1989) 

Developed by Sony, the smallest of the formats in our selection, it uses a 4mm magnetic tape inside a cassette and used the same rotating head/helical scan technology as the VHS/Betamax video formats. There had been plans to use it for video recording as well as in domestic audio to replace the analogue compact cassette, but neither were adopted, and it became a professional digital audio medium heavily used in the 90s. It could record at 48, 44.1 and 32kHz. It was discontinued in 2005, replaced by direct recording to hard drive and SD card. It was used routinely by King Crimson and on Fripp-related projects to make stereo soundboard recordings in the 90s, and a running DAT was often used to record studio sessions and rehearsals. It was also the standard format for creating a finished album master at DGM. The example comes from the Virgin Records tape archive, and contains The Concise King Crimson, a 1993 compilation released on CD. This would have been a digital master of the album, but still required a CD Mastering Engineer to create a U-matic master with time code and PQ coding containing the track information for use by the pressing plant. 

7.  CD-R (1988)  

Probably the only one from our selection that we could actually play without very much difficulty. Introduced in 1988, the earliest CD writing hardware cost $35000, this would fall to as little as $20 two decades later, and CD writing drives became a built-in feature to most PCs. DGM acquired the SADiE Windows-based digital editing system in the early 90s and used CD-R to create audio masters containing the necessary PQ coding to be sent to the CD manufacturer and used for glass mastering without the need for a U-matic tape. The disc is written using a laser to heat the organic dye coating to create non-reflective spots that serve the same function as the pits pressed into the surface of a standard CD. It only had an average life expectancy of 10 years though, with dye degradation and failure of the reflective layer being the most common problems. Only the more expensive gold CD-R has been good for longer-term archival storage. Seen above is a CD-R of the 2002 30th Anniversary 24-bit remaster edition of THRAK, released by Virgin in a mini gatefold sleeve. This used HDCD (High Definition Compatible Digital) - an encoding/decoding process that claimed to increase the dynamic range and resolution of 16-bit CDs to 20-bit quality. 

8.  DLT III (CompactTape III) (c. 1990–1992) 

A digital linear tape format housed in an enclosed single-reel cartridge. Before DDP images could be uploaded over the internet, DLT was the industry-standard medium for delivering DVD masters to pressing plants for glass mastering. Known for its reliability, far superior to a burned DVD-R, which could be prone to dust and errors, and for its high storage capacity, sufficient for the high resolution audio, surround sound and video content. A separate DLT was required for each layer in dual-layered DVDs. This one contains the data for the Starless And Bible Black DVD-A, authored by Opus Productions and included in the 40th Anniversary edition of the album released by DGM in 2011. 

9.  ADAT (Alesis Digital Audio Tape)(1991).

Another video-based audio recording system using standard VHS cassettes, this one used for multi-track recordings. Up to 8 tracks of 16 bit audio could be recorded on high-quality S-VHS videotape. As many as 16 machines could be connected to provide up to 128 tracks. The format made small home recording studios affordable. This example contains surround sound mixes from King Crimson’s 1995 concerts in Japan from the time of the Deja VROOOM DVD. A huge number of ADATs are to be found in the archive from 1990s tours by Sylvian and Fripp and the King Crimson Double Trio, when every night was recorded, with a dedicated sound engineer to handle this. 

10.  Zip Drive (1995)

It offered 100MB of storage on a removable cartridge, which was a significant increase compared to standard floppy disks of the time. The disks themselves were larger and more robust, resembling an oversized floppy. This one contains image captures from the King Crimson videos The Noise, recorded in Fréjus and Live in Japan and artwork for Thrakattak. It replaced SyQuest as the preferred method for delivering artwork, before writing to CD-R became the new standard.

Glossary - Know your DDPs from your DVDs:

DVD  Digital Versatile Disc
DVD-R  Recordable DVD
DVD-A   Audio DVD
DLT Digital Linear Tape
DDP Disc Description Protocol
DAT Digital Audio Tape
DGM a small mobile record label

In 1975 with King Crimson on hiatus (as it would remain until 1980), Robert Fripp's appearances on album or on stage were rare. When he did appear, it was with Brian Eno. Circumstances following an accident in January 1975 led to Eno formulating the idea of ambient music as detailed in the notes to Discreet Music - released in December 1975. The title track of Discreet Music was initially conceived as a backing loop for Fripp to play over at a series of concerts. These concerts took place in Spain, France and England in late May 1975. An audio restored edition of the legendary Paris concert bootlegs has been issued on CD.

 
A short section from that concert, reversed, provided the basic track for Wind on Water - the opening piece from the second Fripp and Eno album Evening Star. The title track that follows features a Fripp solo that is regarded by fans as one of his most beautiful performances. The short, pretty loop called Evensong and Wind on Wind an extract from Discreet Music formed the remainder of the album's first half. Perhaps more pastoral than truly ambient, and in part indicative of the type of music that Eno would feature on his later Music for Films albums this was a firm step away from the long form pieces that had made up No Pussyfooting. As if to balance the equation, the second side comprised a single piece An Index of Metals. Running to almost 29 minutes it is almost the antithesis of the warm inviting music on the album’s first half. Almost forty years on from its original recording, the sense of unease conveyed by the piece remains intact.

Download here: Evening Star 

Also available on CD and LP

Today at 18:00 GMT...

Tomorrow at 12:00 GMT...