"In the blue August moon
In the cool August moon"

And the guitar moves in, pouring out unexpectedly with mathematical precision.

The traveler continues telling his story, but he can tell we're not listening to him. He's just part of it. It's that guitar sound, expanding out wards moving upwards.

Finally it erupts, sending out flairs and ionic fire all around us. It sounds like nothing else we've ever heard. Controlled but soaring out in all directions. This might be akin to ecstasy.

The sun is going down, the horizon is disappearing into darkness. the ions keep splitting and flowing all around us, until everything just fades away.

"St. Elmo's Fire" might just be finest moment to come out of Brian Eno's work with Robert Fripp. Perhaps Brian Eno's finest song ever (though "Deep Blue Day" is his finest composition).

It's the perfect junction point between Eno's "song" period" and his "soundscape" period. Cinematic and beautiful. Eno's lyrics are perfectly written for the music. They aren't disposable words written just to fill out the piece as Eno would so often do. Yet, they are still cryptic and ambivalent enough to not interfere with the music surrounding you.

The soundscape is lush and truly evocative of a world around you. This isn't the wallpaper music Eno would sometimes be guilty of later in his career. It's purposeful and full of ideas.

Credit Eno for creating a masterful sound for Fripp to lay down on, but it is Fripp who owns this show. He creates ascending and descending guitar lines, crashing down and on top of each other. It's a sound and performance that is worthy of it's name sake.

It's astonishing each time. Treated somehow, but not processed and not inorganic. Maddening in it's beauty and slippery too, always snaking off in directions your ear doesn't expect it to take.

There is more going on in this track than most artists will achieve in a life time, yet it's simple and graspable.

A journey that takes place in just over 3 minutes.

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Then and now