The greatest thing about this album is that, whereas Crimson albums wouldn't have anything resembling a "national identity," this album is so thoroughly British in so many places that I can't help but grin. First, I must point out that, thanks to this album, I can never ever hold any malice towards Robert Fripp again, if only because nobody who can deliver such a hilarious spoken piece as The Saga of "Rodney Toady" deserves anybody's hatred. This is BRILLIANT straight-faced British humor, and Fripp's delivery is simply perfect as perfect can be - I can't imagine anybody else saying "Rodney's mother was fat and ugly, and Rodney's father was even .... fat-and-uglier" or anything along those lines and doing it better than good ole Robert does here. God Bless Robert Fripp.

The rest of the album, with the exception of a LAME repeated spoken partner to "Rodney Toady," entitled "Just George," is basically a ton of Kinks-style Brit Pop crossed with some jazz ideas and the occasional bit of Moody-Bluesian balladry. Some bits of Crimsonian elements creep in here and there (some of the vocal harmonies in "North Meadow," the brass riff in "Elephant Song," the dissonant guitar lines of "The Crukster," the bits of classical influence in "Suite No. 1"), but for the most part this is just really solid, slightly tweaked pop with elements of music hall. For a Crimson fan, I guess that wouldn't necessarily be the best news, but for somebody like me, who likes the concurrent Kinks albums (not to mention that I consider Between the Buttons one of the best pop albums ever), it's cause to pump my arms up a couple of inches and utter a quiet "woo hoo." Some songs are better than others, to be sure, but I'm quite sure that I won't be able to get the melodies to "One in a Million," "How Do They Know?," "North Meadow" and "Thursday Morning" out of my head for quite a while.

So yeah, even though it's kinda hard to give this an extensive review (not necessarily because of the album itself - I'm in kind of a daze as I write this, you see), this is one of the most worthwhile historical curiousities I've come across in a long time. There's tons of interesting, tweaked and hilarious bits to dig out while listening throughout, and if it weren't for all these ridiculous "Just George" bits, this would have a chance to take quite a significant place in my collection. As is, it's still freakin' amusing.

Anton Jägare (antonjagare.hotmail.com) (11/13/09)

Delightful. Cheerful insanity indeed. This is what, British art-pop with serious jazz influences? And the Saga of Rodney Toad of course.
All the first three songs not only have amazing hooks, North Meadows has a brilliant jazzy guitar solo, Newly-Weds is one of the cutest pop tunes I've ever heard and One In A Million is just delightful beyond all words. Oh that silly little bass line, oh those flute flourish (or whatever they are). And it hardly gets worse from there. Nearly every sone offers something interesting, my favourites (beyond the first three) would have to be Elephant Song, with that ultra-cool jazzy brass riff (cool in a way only jazzy brass riffs can be) and hilarious lyrics (what do these guys have against fat people by the way?) and Suite No. 1 where young Fripp just really shines. And the moody mid-section is no slouch either.

Overall, a definite 12 from me, and not a weak one either. I can only recommend you (and anyone who likes this) to try and find The Brondesbury Tapes from the same fellas, which is just as good if not even better (you havn't lived until you've heard Fripp's Why Don't You Just Drop In, an anti-hippie song which is as biting and catchy as anything Zappa penned at the time).

Of course, one should note that its impact and importance wasn't completely for the better. On the one hand, its overnight success inspired many bands that might not have otherwise done so to take up the prog genre, and that wasn't (at least in the short term) necessarily a good thing. It's no concidence for me that the outpouring of terrific prog albums began not one year later, but two years later - 1970 is filled to the brim with clumsy transitional albums by talented bands that wanted to be prog but hadn't quite figured out the genre's finer points. There were some exceptions (Gentle Giant, though it's VERY much like this album, or H to He by Van Der Graaf Generator, though even they put out their own mediocre prog album that year in The Least We Can Do is Wave to Each Other, or ELP), but they were just that, exceptions.

There's also the fact that, ultimately, this album, in my humble opinion, helped shorten the shelf-life of "quality" prog. Most genres have a lengthy "embryonic" stage, where the rules and boundaries and positive qualities of the genre are established. Then there's a "peak" period, where a slew of solid albums are released within the genre, and afterwards there's a decline, where high quality output gets harder and harder to find. In the Court of the Crimson King had the interesting effect of completely eliminating the "embryonic" stage in one fell swoop. Ultimately, 95% of all the further developments of the genre were embellishments of the ideas presented here, and while that allowed for greatness for a good while, the possibilities were capped simply by this fact.

Alright, enough of the peripheral impact of this album, let's talk about the music. The most important member of the band at this point, despite what "Fripp runs everything" proponents might believe, was mellotronist/saxophonist/flautist Ian McDonald, who also played the biggest role in the songwriting. The melodies are heavily based in a classical, operatic tradition (except for the opener, of course), with some connections to regular pop but much more bombastic. Still, the melodies are GOOD, so even somebody who might hate the idea of pretense in music might still get a kick out of the quality tunes found here. The arrangements tend to follow suit - the mellotrons create an overwhelming symphonic effect at times, while the drumming (courtesy of Michael Giles) is deep, echoey and, yup, bombastic. Fripp is mostly downplayed (except, again, on the first track), yet makes his presence felt with some brilliantly beautiful electric and acoustic lines.

The vocals and lyrics also fit firmly into the bombast motif. Pete Sinfield contributes the lyrics (though nothing else), and while they're as pretentious as all get-out, they're not imageless by any means. It actually helps to listen to the lyrics the way you'd listen to the lyrics of an opera - listen to the sounds of the words, occasionally pick up on a moving or repeated line here and there, and just let them blend into the instrumentation. Granted, Sinfield turned out to be a HORRID influence, provoking whomever to jot down the most pretentious yet meaningless stuff imaginable ("All we are is dust in the wind!"), and even he himself wasn't so great all the time, but on this album, he's more or less ok. And besides, it helps that he has Greg Lake to sing his lines - of all the voices in rock, I can't think of anybody more suited to bombastic, near operatic-singing, and he allows all the lines, good and bad, to come alive.

Now, at this point, I should start talking about the actual songs. Problem is, this album has been reviewed a 100 zillion times by sites like mine, and I'm not sure there's ANYTHING left to say about them that hasn't been said. So here's the general breakdown - if you want more details, just piece them together from the other review sites on the net.

"21st Century Schizoid Man:" Booming guitar-based rhythm track, distorted screaming vocals, beautifully apocalyptic lyrics, incredible mid-song sax-guitar jam, WILD Hendrix-style guitar soloing.

"I Talk to the Wind:" Lovely melody, lots of flutes, ultra-pretentious lyrics, nice breather between epics.

"Epitaph:" Brilliant melody, layers of well-constructed bombast, lots of mellotron and woodwinds, terrific lyrics, AWESOME vocals, beautiful guitar solo, lengthy but not overlong fadeout.

"Moonchild:" The mis-hit of the album, first two minutes are an interesting ballad (with a fascinating atmosphere), next ten are quiet and incoherent rambling jamming on vibes and bits of percussion. Blargh.

"In the Court of the Crimson King:" Ultra-bombastic, brilliant melody, TERRIFIC harmonies following the chorus, lots of mellotron, lots of variation on the main theme.

There you have it. Again, if you go to this album looking for the pinnacle of prog, you'll be disappointed, but if you come here looking for where it all began AND why anybody cared in the first place, you won't be let down.

Daniel and Corine Bosch (dcbosch.optusnet.com.au) (10/29/02)

Wow! What a start. As you alluded in your review, unlike bands like Yes, Genesis and the like, the first King Crimson album was fully prog, and surprisingly cohesive, mature (the band had not even been together a year when they recorded this, more like about 7 months), fully realised.

  As for the songs, "21st Century Schizoid Man" is a mind-blowing opening, showing everything the band had - brilliant musicianship, great singing, interesting lyrics - what more could you want? "I Talk To The Wind" is a great ballad, showing the quiet side of KC. The gentle flutes starting this song so soon after the cacophonous ending to "Schizoid Man" just melted my brain the first time I heard it. "Epitaph is a powerful song with another great lyric, and possibly the best vocal Greg Lake ever recorded. "Moonchild" demonstrated one of Crim's great passions - improvisation. the extended improv after the short "song" section is love it or loathe it stuff. When in the right frame of mind, I do enjoy the piece. Finally the title track, and it's another tour de force, though, for mine, not quite as fine as "Epitaph" I'd have to give it 9.5 out of 10.

On a side note, I'm not sure one could call The Nice's The Thoughts Of Emerlist Davjack the first prog album. For me, there is only one really prog track - "Rondo". The rest of the album is more geared toward psychedelic pop with the occasional spurt of bombast from Keith Emerson. If I were going to award this one, I'd say right band, wrong album and give the award for first prog album to their second album, Ars Longa Vita Brevis which featured both a classical piece reinterpreted ("Karalia Suite") and a side-long epic (the title track, complete with "movements", and another classical quote to boot with the "Brandenburger" section). Just my two cents worth!

bsitting.mail.math.ucsb.edu (11/13/02)

You pretty much hit this album right on the nail (including 'summaries' of each of the songs, instead of reviewing the songs as usual...)! Personally, either "Epitaph" or "21st Century Schizoid Man" is my favorite song from this album. As it's mentioned, this album is surprisingly well-conceived for a debut album (minus half of "Moonchild" of course).

It is quite astute of you to bring up the influences this album had on prog, especially the "shorter shelf life" comment. I didn't quite think of it quite that way, yet there seems to be so much truth to that. Even mid-70's Crimson owes to this record! (The 80's is another beast all together...) I must say that the nonsensical lyrics seem to have gained notoriety in the Psychedelic era (from which it seems the experimental aspects of this era led to prog rock) at least. A prime suspect of this comes from Cream ("Those Were the Days", "Swlbar" (sic)). But, admittedly, Sinfeld wrote some really BAD lyrics on the next album.

Oh, and I agree with the 9(13).

Raghavan RANGANATHAN (S3046624.student.rmit.edu.au) (8/10/03)

This is a good album but I am not sure if I would place it on such a high level as you do. The songwriting seems to be a bit underdeveloped. The title track and Schizoid man each feature just a single verse sung 4 times over (albeit with different lyrics). No chorus, no middle eights, nothing and it frankly gets boring when the same melody is repeated over and over again without any variations. Oh well, I still like the album anyway.

Akis Katsman (watta502.yahoo.gr) (9/30/03)

I think it's a brilliant album, especially in its time, except the clinky-tinky part on 'Moonchild' which has no reason to exist. The other tracks rule though. '21st Century Schizoid Man' is, without a doubt, the best song of 1969, hands down. It was like nothing else at that time. Brilliant. Lake does his best on 'Epitaph' and the title track, two great epics. 'I Talk To The Wind' is a little less interesting, but pretty as a teddy bear. I dig the flute too. Get this album, regardless of how much money you have. An absolute classic. 9.5/10 (half a point off due to the pointless 'Moonchild').

Trfesok.aol.com (10/27/06)

I bought this after I got into ELP. And the reaction was "Wow!". Of course, Lake's voice is really the only link. The power of the album is undeniable. I remember once Justin Hayward taking a dig at Crimson for copping their sound. While this is true to a certain extent, Crim took the sound into a far darker direction. (Only the Moodies track "What Am I Doing Here?" approaches the bleakness of "Epitaph" or the nightmare of the title track.) Of course, "..Schizoid Man.." sounds nothing like the Moodies, and the group's technical proficiency was far superior. Another thing that made them stand out was that they were really the first art rock band to truly incorporate jazz into their music. (The Nice tried, with covering Dave Brubeck's "Blue Rondo a la Turk", but all they did was rearrange it into a rock mode). This, of course turned out both great (the "Mirrors" freak out middle section of "..Schizoid Man..") and really bad (the endless coda to "Moonchild". They called this section "The Dream" and "The Illusion", but it should been called "The Nap" and "The Snooze").  With "Moonchild", they did bite off more than they could chew so that they could fill up space on the album, but becuase they tackle jazz as well as folk and classical influences, I also agree that this is the first truly prog album. A classic.

Sergei (swamprock.mail.ru) (03/17/07)

Argh...! Similar, you as well as majority critics who describe this album suppose the main mistake. Under the review it is visible that you too abuse with words like "bombastic", instead of main - recognition of the valid greatness of songs and album as a whole. So, we have the really great rock-album which has rendered ENORMOUS influence on development progressive-rock (would be very strange if you did not recognize it!). I advise you to look on " In The Court " from other, less prejudiced point of view. Really you can not forgive to group avantgardish improvisation in Moonchild? It not seems that other tracks (like 21st Schizoid, Epitaph, In The Court) are so majestic what is possible to not accept to heart even long 10-minute "caprice" Moonchild? Eventually, silly to put " In The Court Of The Crimson King " lower than fucking Close To The Edge (which two third - ABSOLUTE bullshit) by Yes. Believe, it is ridiculous!

I not die-hard fan of Crimson and I heard of enough various music to speak about " In The Court... " as about one of greatest products of rock. Ok, it deserves (at least!) 10 (14), but I would put 10 (15).

PS: Please, pay attention to other album KC - Lizard. Your estimation and in this case is too prejudiced, I am sure that you in earnest did not want to understand Lizard. It is a remarkable album. Too.

"matt faris" (7headedchicken.gmail.com) (01/13/11)

I can imagine what it was like to invent progressive rock. In the midst of a big trend, you want to play something that is only somewhat in line with what is going on with the scene, or maybe not at all in line with it, and that also happens to draw influence from music that many people who are part of that scene probably have either not listened to since joining the scene or even never listened to. You show your new ideas to people who are supposedly in the know, and their reaction is less than accepting. Nevertheless, something inside you propells you forward, encouraging you to follow your heart, until suddenly a whole new genre of music is being made and appreciated. Of course, both the people and even the trends themselves then were fathoms more open-minded than they are today, so the chance at something this influential happening again is very slim. Well, even if this album didn't technically start prog-rock, it's still great enough to be as credited for it as it is - and, I, personally think it did, if not for the structure of the album alone, full albums themselves being a key asset to the nature of prog. It's so different sounding from other 60's music - truly from another world; I was blown away the first time I heard it... to Daniel and Corine Bosch: I had that same experience with "I Talk To the Wind." In fact, I'd probably say that's my favorite track on the album, although "The Court of the Crimson King" and "Epitaph" come close, and I happen to love the jam at the end of "Moonchild", especially the slowly strummed upper-register guitar chords. Some call this pointless noodling, but I love stuff like this, like a lot of what is on *Islands* and the quiet parts of Genesis' *The Lamb Lies Down On Broadway*. If I had any complaints, it would be that I always thought the verses to "21st Century Schizoid Man" were a little ridiculous, but you can't beat that lightening fast unison riff in the middle. I'm not sure I fully understand how your scale works, but if I were to use it, and give this album a 9(14), then I can only pray that a 50 lb. sack of creamed corn doesn't fall on my head.

One thing that keeps getting stressed in the liner notes is that, as good as it might have been, Court didn't totally capture the intensity of the band's stage performances, and these performances definitely show a lot of sonic and rhythmic power (the tradeoff, though, is that the stage didn't have as much precision from the mellotron). Aside from multiple renditions of the big three epics of Court (no "Talk to the Wind" or "Moonchild" here), there are two renditions each of "A Man, A City" (later "Pictures of a City") and "Mars" (later "The Devil's Triangle"), and they're a freaking blast. "A Man, A City" might go slightly overboard with the jazzy mid-section, but I enjoy it just fine nonetheless, and the 'main' sections of the song rule as much as they would in the studio version. My definite favorites of this set, though, are the two renditions of "Mars," which do an incredible job of pounding that steady menacing rhythm into my head while the mellotron does its atmospheric thing. So help me, I'm a sucker for a good crescendo, and while the band would have great success in later years with "Talking Drum" and "Dangerous Curves," I'm not totally sure it ever surpassed the sheer grandeur of its live Mars performances for head-pounding build-up.

There are also a number of tracks that didn't make it to any studio album, and they're of, um, mixed quality. "Drop In" would later have some of its music reworked into "The Letters," and it's okayish, though it's easy to see why it was relegated to rarity status. "Get Thy Bearings" (which I first heard on Ladies of the Road) isn't very impressive, Mantra has completely passed me by every time, "Travel Weary Capricorn" sounds like a bad outtake from In Search of the Lost Chord (not in lyrics, but definitely in music), and "Travel Bleary Capricorn" shows that King Crimson had a long ways to go before it could produce effective improvised jazz rock (I'm not a huge fan of the improvs from the '73-'74 incarnation, but on the whole they're way above what's here).

Overall, then, this isn't a must-have for any King Crimson fan, but as I said, a big fan of the first era would do well to hear this album at some point. Giles is a little less precise than in the studio, as is McDonald, but Lake is mostly spectacular on vocals, Fripp sounds fine, and overall the band gels into something incredibly special. Hearing this album, if nothing else, makes it even more clear why King Crimson became such a huge sensation in such a brief period, and from the historical document angle, that makes this worth seeking out. Don't get it before Court or Poseidon, though.

Daniel Bosch (bicycle_legs.optusnet.com.au) (09/29/07)

I love this release. I am definitely NOT one of those who think this is the only KC (I think every incarnation has produced some special music, except maybe for the rotating door 1970-72 period). However, This release does make me wish that this incarnation had done one or two more albums. BTW, if you don't have it, I thoroughly recommend getting the McDonald & Giles album, it's great, IMHO essential for anyone interested in this period of Crim.

So Fripp took over the songwriting duties, almost by default. Unfortunately, he had another major problem to face - I get the strong feeling that Fripp feared that, along with the loss of the main songwriter, a change in direction could prove fatal for both the band's ability to keep fans and to maintain critical respect. As a result, he panicked more than a bit - the first side of this album, by and large, is a direct remake of the first side of Court, and that fact alone seemingly drives some fans away to this day. As an aside, I also get the feeling that Fripp's near maniacal refusal to live in the past that has characterized most King Crimson through the 70's, 80's and 90's is a direct factor of adamently refusing to make a "copying mistake" that even remotely resembles what happened between this and Court. But I digress.

You see, remake or no, this is still a high quality effort. Comparisons with the debut are only natural, and in the end this album is worse in some ways than Court, but better in others. The drawbacks, other than the remake factor, are basically the following: first, strewn throughout the album are three "Peace" songs, with mostly a capella Lake vocals singing some really stupid and really pretentious lyrics. Second, Sinfield's lyrics have taken a major dip in quality from Court (with the exception of one track) - they're as bombastic as ever, but now there are no cleverly ear-catching lines that make them stand out in any good way. Lake does his best to make them work, and he sometimes succeeds, but overall it's hard not to fidget at times.

On the good side: No "Moonchild!" The album also boasts better production than its predecessor - the mellotrons are grander and more awe-inspiring than ever, and everything else just seems to have more punch and vigor. The second side also has a couple of great tracks the likes of which were DEFINITELY not found on Court. First, there's "Cat Food" (which I guess is a leftover from the first album sessions - McDonald has a writing credit), a dissonant-piano-driven proto-New-Wave piece that was picked as the advance single for some reason or another. The lyrics are actually funny for once, the melody is catchy in its own way, and Lake's screams do a great job of making it work. Following that is something completely different - the three-part "The Devil's Triangle," an adapation of Gustav Holst's "Mars The Bringer of War," which had been part of their stage set for quite some time (McDonald has a writing credit here, in the first part). True to the form of the original, the first couple of minutes are a very slow, very intense crescendo with some bits of mellotron here and there, but later it turns into a creepy noisefest with all sorts of eerie keyboard parts moving up and down and side to side, and even a brief quote from the last album's title track. It be neat, yes it be.

Ah, but there's still the issue of the first side, the Court-ripoff. Well, let's be frank - ripoff or no, it's GOOD. The songs may be very stylistically similar to their corresponding tracks on Court, but they're hardly direct ripoffs, and they're definitely performed well. "Pictures of a City" is a great, great sequel to "Schizoid Man" (oddly enough, though, it was performed in the same shows as "Schizoid Man" as early as 1969) - it features the same kind of structure as that track, but there are plenty of differences. The general feel is much jazzier, as the main riff of the track has enough to amply satisfy both rock and jazz lovers fully. It has the same "Lake screams over a booming rhythm track" motif in the verses, yes, but never mind that - the jam in the middle of the track is both better produced and more complex (with another bunch of great Fripp solos) than the "Schizoid" jam, and overall I have trouble seeing how somebody who loved "Schizoid" could hate this (well, except for the fact that the lyrics on this one can't hold a candle to those of "Schizoid").

Next up is the "I Talk to the Wind" match, the lovely poppy "Cadence and Cascade." For this one, the band actually brought in one Gordon Haskell to sing the vocals, and first time I heard it, I didn't even know it wasn't necessarily Lake himself. I'd say the melody is even prettier than the one to "Wind," and the piano/acoustic arrangement could easily be appreciated by somebody who hated "Wind" on general principle (why somebody would hate it I'm not sure). Of course, once again, the lyrics blow chunks, but that's been covered.

Then there's the title track, the "Epitaph" clone. The lyrics are a good deal worse, yet Lake delivers another amazing vocal performance, one that allows me to focus on the sound of his voice and ignore the lyrics. As for the melody, it's much the same as before, but there are a couple of moments of catharsis in the chord sequences that even "Epitaph" struggled to match. Add in that the mellotrons are (as mentioned earlier) much louder, and that the lengthy fadeout gives a genuine epic symphonic feel not really found elsewhere in the world of rock music, and you have a track that, while not exceeding "Epitaph," at least makes a good run at matching it.

And that's your followup. It has its problems, but it's definitely not a huge stepdown from Court (it's pretty close to a D, if you ask me), and Fripp should be given plenty of credit for that. And if you have more doubts about the quality of the album, know this - my brother, whose favorite band is KC, now feels that Court is the worst Crimson album barring Lizard, yet he digs this album. Go figure.

Daniel and Corine Bosch (dcbosch.optusnet.com.au) (10/29/02)

Yes, OK, this album has similarities to the first one. There are good reasons for this. Firstly, as you point out, Robert Fripp didn't want to stray too far due to the personnel changes. Secondly, however, despite the writing credits alot of this album was devised by the original lineup. If you don't already have it, I strongly recommend the two CD box Epitaph which documents the original lineup live. "Pictures Of A City", for example, was in the original lineup's repetoire, known as "A Man, A City". Similarly "The Devil's Triangle", as you pointed out, is an adaptation of "Mars" by Holst, also an early live staple. The "Peace" tracks are silly (although the instrumental version Fripp plays on acoustic is gorgeous) but too short to upset me. On side one the only failure for me is the title track, a flat rewrite of "Epitaph" with much weaker lyrics, a much less impressive vocal from Greg and a tune that is just too similar for its own good. The rest is great though and side two is also impressive. "Cat Food" is my personal favourite, a witty lyric sung with relish and some nutty piano from Keith Tippett. After the debut - wich was a truly collaborative effort, this album was, I think, Robert Fripp trying to find his feet as "bandleader" or whatever. I give it 8.5 out of 10.

bsitting.mail.math.ucsb.edu (11/13/02)

Such pretentious album titles! Personally, the rip-offs do annoy me a little bit (especially on the title song). But, it's hard to deny they are still worthy rip-offs, as Fripp put enough twists to still make it sound fresh. Still, I prefer the originals (though there's more guitar and jazz, making things interesting). Also, Gentle Giant's "Alucard" improves on "Pictures of a City".

Back to the album itself. In all truth, except for the two acapella "Peace" snippets, the songs are really good. And things get even better (and weirder) as we pass to the "original" songs. "The Devil's Triangle" could have made a good soundtrack to a march (what a great build-up). Of course, you noted the reference to the last album (so much for an original comment!). In short, this gets an 8(12) from me (considering I thought it way more pale until recently).

Trfesok.aol.com (05/03/07)

I like it a lot, too, even if half of it's a retread. It does sound a lot clearer than the first album. Sinfield's lyrics had really degenerated into blather, especially on the title track, where he seemingly threw together disconnected phrases for the heck of it. But it sounds cool, anyway. I do think, on the other hand,  that the lyrics to "Cadence and Cascade" (a couple of groupies who evidently become disappointed when they meet their hero in the flesh) are quite touching and delivered nicely by Haskell.  I really like Giles' work here, as well as on "Pictures.." and "The Devil's Triangle." Unlike you, I do think that he gave Bruford a run for the money, at least at this point.  The album may not break enough new ground for hardcore Crim-heads, but I wouldn't have minded if the continues along these lines, based on the quality of this one.

"matt faris" (7headedchicken.gmail.com) (01/13/11)

This is the first Crimson album I bought, so I didn't have the dissapointment of the first side being similar to the debut that is common, but it may not have been too much of a dissapointment anyway: maybe the 2nd and 3rd tracks aren't necessarily improvements, but "Pictures of a City" is an improvement to me. The vocals sound better, the whole thing is groovier, and that guitar tone! When that first distorted chord smashes down in the verse, I think - "no way....no way this could have been recorded in 1970." One thing that I think really pulls the album together and uniquifies it in structure is the 3 "Peace" tracks. So people are saying that Robert Fripp doesn't like having his picture taken, and I think we all know what that means: he doesn't want people to know that he's not the singer....... no, seriously, there could be many reasons for that. He might prefer to be asked first, or maybe he had a bad childhood experience. Maybe he's humble, or maybe he worries that someone will photoshop in a guitar that he would never play - (probably not that, since they didn't have photoshop in the 70's) - or maybe he has a completely different reason that only he could tell you. Who cares. He's a great guitarist.

The bad news of the album comes in the form of the first seventeen minutes, a combination of two tracks, "Formentera Lady" and "Sailor's Tale." The actual song isn't that bad - after pointless instrumental wanking for about two minutes, we're greeted with a pleasant late-60's-style easterny psychedelic ballad (with prog lyrics, of course), and while it's nothing genial, it's still a nice escape from stuff like "Happy Family" off the last album. Unfortunately, Fripp just couldn't let a good thing go undisturbed - over the next seven minutes or so, he goes for dissonance overload, throwing in choirs purposefully singing off key and various instruments just playing whatever. Then the band breaks into "The Sailor's Tale," and while Fripp gets a lengthy guitar solo that might seem alright in its bizarreness, it pales to any number of his efforts before and after. And the rest of the music, well, it's basically just more of the same - instrumental noise taking the place of good ideas and cohesion. I will admit that some bits and pieces of the jamming are interesting on a purely technical level, but once again, I've heard much much better in my life.

Amazingly, though, the rest of the album is totally unlike that seventeen minute waste. The next two tracks are, like, actual songs! With real melodies, real dynamics, real riffs, you name it. Just as well, Sinfield all of a sudden develops a decent talent for lyric-writing - "The Letter" is clear, concise and non-cliched in its tale of one man and two women, "Ladies of the Road" is filled with puns about screwing groupies, and the closing title track provides nice imagery of floating on your own private island. Nothing pretentious, nothing meaningless, just some nice texts allowing for actual resonance with the listener. So hats off to our favorite lyrical dork.

But back to the music. The opening melody of "The Letter" is quietly eerie, with Boz setting the scene of the first two verses, and then out of nowhere comes this GREAT mellotron/brass riff with Fripp doing some of his stuff over it. Then there's some slight sax noodling to build up the tension further, with Fripp adding some guitar coloring once more, and following that Boz starts screaming the "IMPALED ON NAILS OF ICE" part in a way that really conveys the hurt and frustration of the wife, before going back to the quiet eerie melody that goes with the wife killing herself. Now don't get me wrong, this isn't the greatest rock song of all time or anything like that, but it's just such a nice pleasant surprise to discover that Fripp could, in fact, pen a solid rock song, albeit with some necessary Crimson twisting.

Then of course there's "Ladies of the Road," with naughty music to go with the naughty lyrics. The verse melody drips with subtle sleaze, the instrumental breaks are bass heavy with great sleazy sax parts, there's bits and pieces of typical Fripp guitar, and there's even an ultra-charming Beatlesesque chorus to match! WHERE WERE YOU ON LIZARD??!!!

Now the next two tracks are a bit more "pretentious," but in a good way. "Prelude: Song of the Gulls" is a 100% classical composition by Fripp, who takes full advantage of the presence of all the instrumentalists available to him in the studio. It doesn't break any ground in classical music, of course, but I don't really mind that - the era of classical music Fripp is emulating with this piece was characterized by rigid rules and standards, after all, and this is just another quality composition following those rules. Besides, Fripp is one person I'd much prefer to stick to "regular" classical than modern classical - if ever there was a creative person who could afford some (not total, but some) "rigidity," it's Fripp.

Then there's the title track, a pleasant nine-minute ballad driven by keyboards and Mark Charig's (one of the album's featured players) cornet. Whatever be, the music creates a really beautiful atmosphere - I really feel like I'm on a sea floating towards an island, except that for me, the sea I'm on is in outer space, and the island is somewhere in the middle of the gorgeous album cover. Major kudos go to Fripp for the restraint shown in this composition - the Fripp of the previous year would have tried to make the last six minutes of this into "The Battle of Glass Tears," after all. Here, though, Fripp managed to create one of the ideal songs for listening to just before it's time to go to bed, and that's a compliment. Of course, for whatever reason, after the track ends, there's silence, and then a tape of Fripp giving some direction in the studio, followed by strings tuning up. Fripp's voice is neat, that's all I can say about that.

Overall, I can see how many KC fans could end up hating this - the second half of the album isn't really "progressive" at all, and the first half gives a bad name to experimentation in rock music. However, as one who judges music by its quality and not by how many points on the "progressive checklist" it matches, I can tell you that the second half of this album is very very enjoyable. Don't overspend on the album, but don't avoid it either.

Daniel and Corine Bosch (dcbosch.optusnet.com.au) (11/06/02)

Another year, another lineup! It must have been unsettling to Fripp for this to keep happening. And with another lineup, another stylistic change, leaving the jazz influenced freakouts behind for classical (on the quieter pieces) and, on the louder pieces a sign of things to come - hard rock. I have to admit I don't like this album any more than Lizard, posibly a little less. The reason? Although this album has some killer cuts ("The Letters", "Ladies Of The Road", "The Sailor's Tale") Thel long, quiet pieces are a problem for me. "Formentera Lady" and "Islands" are pretty, Boz sings them pretty well and the lyrics are not as bad as the admittedly got at times on Lizard, but they don't do alot - they drag on and on, not going anywhere. And "Prelude - Song Of The Gulls" is pretty but hardly Crimson, if you ask me. All up, I tried to give this a 7, but could only manage a 6.5 out of 10

Don't know if you noticed, but there are a couple of rehashed ideas on this album too. "The Letters" borrows it's melody entirely from an In The Court Of The Crimson King era song called "Drop in", but has an entirely different lyric and feel. Also, ever notice the similarity between "Prelude" and the second movement of Fripp's "Suite No. 1" from The Cheerful Insanity Of Giles Giles and Fripp? Something to think about.

Akis Katsman (watta502.yahoo.gr) (9/30/03)

One of the weakest Crimson albums. It has the beautiful classical piece 'Prelude: Song Of The Gulls' and the amazing title track (one of my favourite Crimson songs ever), but the other songs are messy and not very exciting. 'Formentera Lady' has a nice melody but it's too long, the singer sings too quiet and the 'operatic' ending is dumb. 'The Letters' and 'Ladies On The Road' are okay jazz-rock songs, but the lyrics suck ass. I dig the saxophone part on 'Ladies' though. As for 'Sailor's Tale', I don't have any problem with it, I can say I almost enjoy it, but give me 'Fracture' or 'Larks pt.2' any day, I enjoy them much more. Not the best album for a King Crimson introduction. I give Islands a 6.5/10.

Lazer59882.aol.com (11/17/03)

Terribly underrated by just about everyone (well not REALLY everyone). Formentera Lady is overlong and a little wanky. BUT the melody is beautiful in its simplicity, and Boz's oh-so-subtle variations on the bassline keep it from getting too boring. The horn solo sounds like it belongs on another song, as do the voices at the end because they're so offf key. When the voices begin to die down, however, the song builds to a crescendo with the strings, then finally fades into the cymbals of Sailor's Tale. It takes awhile to get going, but when the sax solokicks up its just thrilling and very jazzy. The guitar solo, dare I say, SUCKS! Even the solo on the Earthbound version is better. Here we just have noise-tuneless and cacaphonous. When the rest of the band comes back in we get some stupid noises and more cacaphony which finally dies into nothing for a few seconds. The Letters is great. The lyrics are seemingly soap opera-ish until the end. The main song part is nice and the jazzy midsection is wonderful. The way Fripp's guitar wail just slides down into the quiter section with Boz's pulsing bass building tension...masterful. Finally, for the last two verses, Boz really sings here (mind you he's no Greg Lake), the verses louder and more powerful than the former two. Next is Ladies of the Road. Great chorus and some interesting instrumental passages, but i dont see the point. Boz doesnt sing as much as he yells and it drags on too long. Also it doesnt fit with ANYTHING in the KC catalogue. Ever. It's just so non KC. It's just not my cup of tea. Prelude: Song of the Gulls is beautiful with the uncredited string section. I dont neccessarily dig this type of classical music (I prefer grand symphonies and the like) but it's great. Finally, Islands closes the album. It too is beautiful. Mark Charig's cornet solo - just behind the beat - over Fripps harmonium is a thing to behold. You're absolutely right when you say Fripp shows restraint (though i dont know the song you are referring to). No weirdness or pretentiousness, just pure unadultered beauty. Ian's percussion is great in its simplicity, just a 1-2-3-4 thing, but it helps build the tension to the climax with the grand mellotron. I've heard rumors that the end (with Fripp counting and the strings tuning up) was supposed to be the beginning to Formentera Lady, which would explain the beginning of that song's "pointless wanking." Either way, I like it.

Overall, I would give it a 8 (12), with the best song being Islands. BTW: I bought this at the same time as To Our Children's Children's Children and i listen to this much more. Interesting...

Mike (thedukeofprunes.webtv.net) (12/23/03)

Not a bad album really but not one of their best nor not one of my favorite Crimson albums. I feel 'The Sailor's Tale' is the best and strongest track on the album and it brings jazz fusion up a notch. This album and their previous album (Lizard) I would recommend for serious die-hard Crimson fans only.

"Saenz, Jason" (jsaenz.sagetelecom.net) (10/11/04)

Why does everybody bash and smash this album so bad? I just dont get it, ISLANDS is not terrible at all, in fact it's really trippy and really complex. Of course you do have to give it a couple of listens before you are able to appreciate it, but once you understand where Mr. Fripp is trying to take you it gets much better. I guess you have to really understand it a lot and let yourself get into it. If you just want to put a number on an album, then I agree with your rating, if you want to rate music, I think you need to think about that crappy rating again, why does everyone rate this so low? I know you might look for stability in a record or some good hooks, but come on man! All we are saying is give ISLANDS a chance, you might like it a lot!

Matti.Alakulju.upm-kymmene.com (12/27/07)

A nice little story, not directly about this album, but this line-up: As you know, Fripp has always been unwilling to play his old hits, and I admire and respect him hugely for that. Back in 1971, this band was playing in Detroit, and the loud American audience was all the time requesting In The Court or Schizoid Man or Epitaph. By the end of the gig old Bob got pissed off and decided to give them some old hits.
The band returned for an encore, they started to play a very sleazy typically American Hoochie Coochie Man- type vamp. On top of this Boz sang a couple of verses of In The Court, and after that it all veered off into a free jazz jam! This is one of the funniest musical jokes I've ever heard. This gig was released through the on-line collectors' club of King Crimson.

MATTHEW CONSTANTINE (11/22/08)

I love this one, too - including the opening medley.   It's worth noting that (FACTS) Fripp's guitar solo on Sailor's Tale features yet another use of the VCS3.  And that Prelude is an orchestration of one of the key themes from the Giles Giles & Fripp "suite".

"David Sheehan" (davidasheehan.gmail.com) (01/13/10)

Wow, big disagreement on this one, John. I really like this album. I think most of your review kinda mirrors my feelings towards it, but I just can't seem to share your hatred of the first seventeen minutes (the "waste" as you put it). I have listened to it over and over, and I just don't hear a lot of pointless wanking, or hell, even that much dissonance. The female vocals towards the end of 'Formentera Lady' sound good to me. A little off, but appropriately weird. I don't hear much dissonance for dissonance's sake. Maybe my ears are wired differently than yours. I also really think that 'Sailor's Tale' is really exciting and energetic, especially Fripp's crazy solo. The rest of the album is really solid, and while 'Ladies of the Road' doesn't necessarily fit with the other songs, it's still a good track. Sounds almost like Crimson doing the Rolling Stones. I think there is a slight possibility that I'm overrating this by a smidge from hearing Lizard first. That album is rank. Also, the album cover is sooooooo pretty (I'm kinda of an astronomy enthusiast), that maybe I'm transferring those feelings to the actual music a little bit. But probably not. I do agree 100% with your feelings about the final track 'Islands.' It's a good example of atmosphere over substance really coming through in a song's favor in a big way. There's not really much to that song, but it is so nice. I wouldn't mind if it was extended another nine minutes.
Oh, I give the album a twelve. Really.

"matt faris" (7headedchicken.gmail.com) (01/13/11)

I have to admit I'm not as familiar with this one as some of the others. It was one of my last purchases before losing everything, but I would like to hear it again. I don't remember any of the lyrics, but I remember the first song being very interesting, reminding me of a lot of 20th Century classical. And "A Sailor's Tale" seemed to be very intense, and the title track very beautiful and majestic, reminding me of some of Mark Isham's work. I do, however, very vividly remember your pick for best song, "Song of the Gulls." If Robert Fripp conducted those strings, then he really knew what he was doing. The precise timing of those "lifts" very acurately depicts the motion of seagulls while flying.

The first disc is what you'd expect out of a standard live album - a bunch of performances taken from the tour and strung together to seem like a full (or at least a good chunk) concert. Frankly, the first disc isn't much to get excited about - some performances are great, some are just good, and some are quite ehn. The opening "Pictures of a City" loses the hard edge it once had, with the main riff becoming more lounge-jazzy to less-than-great effect. "The Letters" is done mostly pro forma, with one unfortunate exception - rather than belting out the "impaled on nails of ice" lines, he just sings them quietly, and while I guess that works in its own way, I'd much rather have some screaming there. And "Formentera Lady" is, well, "Formentera Lady" - starts out ok, then just becomes pointlessly wanky. There's also a pair of jazz improv thingamajigs that pop up on here - "Groon" (which kinda sucks, has no vocals, and takes up a whole seven minutes) and "Get Thy Bearings" (a Donovan cover with some needless vocals, that's at least better than "Groon"). If you can come up with better descriptions, I'd like to see you try.

On the other hand, "The Sailor's Tale" turns out to translate VERY well into a live environment - for whatever reason, my brain is more willing to accept a jam of that nature outside the studio than within. "Cirkus" also improves from before, primarily because Burrell's vocals are ten times what Haskell's were in the song - I almost find myself getting swayed by the meaningless imagery here, and that's something I wouldn't have said before. It's also taken at a slower tempo than on Lizard, and for whatever reason this seems to up the intensity of the piece enough to make it quite tolerable. There's also a terrific version of "Schizoid Man" on this disc, with the band booming and jamming in a way they don't even approach elsewhere on the album - Burrell does a GREAT job of singing the verses, even without distortion, and the mid-song jam is just what you'd expect from a high quality "Schizoid Man." And finally, the disc closes out with one of the biggest surprises imaginable - a forty five second snippet of "In the Court of the Crimson King" ... done as a BLUES number. Yup, you read that right - I wish they'd included the whole track, but what's here is definitely nice for some giggles.

As you might guess, while the first disc is ok, it is definitely NOT the justification for giving this compilation an A. Disc 2 is one of the best ideas Fripp has ever had in compiling an archive release - after the first track, which is the first verse of a live Schizoid Man, the next 50-odd minutes are various Schizoid jams (from this same tour) strung together without break (well, sort of - for whatever reason, there's about a minute of silence in the middle of track 11, before we get yet another jam). Let me tell you something - if this disc is any indication, this was a GREAT era for "21st Century Schizoid Man." One incredible blast jam comes after another, waves of WILD saxophone and guitar solos keep pouring out, and it never EVER gets boring. Some solos are jazzier, some more psychedelic, and every last one of them is improvised jamming BLISS.

In short, NO fan of the band can possibly be without the second disc. The first disc could be done without quite easily, but it's still ok, so if you see this for a reasonable price, make sure to swipe it up.

Eric Benac (sonicdeath10.hotmail.com) (04/29/08)

I quite like this live album, and didn't even know it existed until reading your review! This particular group did have some playing talent, and some good songs, but I'm glad they broke up because...well, uh, the Larks group is a tad bit better, I think. Still, good stuff on here, with most of the downfalls of this particular version of the group handily avoided.

  By the way, you do well to avoid Earthbound except for one thing: the rendition of 21st Century Schizoid Man is the best I've ever heard. I know that sounds weird, but Boz's screaming on the track, while rough, fits it, even with the weird synthesizer effect they throw on it for no reason. The weird, thick sound of the rest of the album actually fits really well onto this song. Robert has never sounded so dirty in his guitar playing, and the rest of the band thump and blow on the song in ways like...well, like the Schizoid tracks on Ladies of The Road...still, it's really the best I've heard, so the album is, unfortunately, not something you can avoid...I'm just trying to get you to pay 8 bucks on a shitty album, see? It's fun. The rest of it is funk blues improv scat nonsense that does NOT serve the King Crimson name well. Fripp seems pissed off and illustrates it with his solos and that's kind of fun.

Chris Ray (chris.ray.hunterlink.net.au) (10/05/08)

One of my favourite King Crimson albums, well disc 2 of it is, I don't listen to disc 1 much, but disc 2 is awesome. As you say a brilliant idea from Fripp to string a whole series of Schizoid solos together, and they really do never get boring. There's not many guitarists you could say that an hour of their solos (and some Collins sax solos, but it's mainly guitar solos) wouldn't get boring but Fripp is one of the few (along with Hendrix and maybe Omar Rodriguez from The Mars Volta, though I'm not sure how many people would agree with me on that one). Hopefully one day he'll do another volume with the Schizoid solos from the 73-74 band, as all the versions I've heard from that era are equally as good, though with perhaps more of a metal edge, which isn't a bad thing. And to the comment from Eric above saying that you need to get Earthbound just for the version of Schizoid Man, well you don't because it's on this album (well the jam is at least); track 5 on the Schizoid Man disc is the Earthbound version.

The new direction for the band, as defined on this album, can best be described (in my opinion) as "Heavy Avant-Prog." If we accept Robert's description of the initial King Crimson as "Hendrix plays Bartok," this new version can be described as "Hendrix plays Eric Dolphy plays Bartok." This album is prog rock, but rather than pushing the stylistic boundaries of the Court formula, like most bands in the genre were doing at the time (not that I'm putting those bands and albums down, you see), it instead seeks to totally break down and rebuild the genre from its very foundation. Combining the already established manner of "Schizoid" jamming with elements of avantgarde jazz, and framing these jams within a tight mathematical setup of climaxes, rises and falls, it's little wonder that some critics of the day referred to this as "outer limits" music. NOBODY was making music quite like this, and no wonder; nobody else had a combination of people conducive to making this sort of art, and it's doubtful that many others would have even if they could.

The new KC lineup included six people, counting a replacement lyricist for Peter Sinfield (who went off to join ELP), one Robert Palmer-James. Palmer-James, for better or worse, doesn't really have any impact on the album whatsoever - three of the six tracks contain lyrics, and while they're not blatantly icky, there's not much in the way of consistent imagery contained within. "Easy Money" does have some amusing anti-capitalist rantings, but I've heard better. Still, there's something to be said for the fact that there's no "Stake a lizard by the throat" to be found here.

Now, the lyrics may be irrelevant, but that obviously can't be extended to the rest of the players. The bass and vocals void is filled by one John Wetton, previously a member of Family and later of Asia fame. He's not a great vocalist, but he's unquestionably the best the band has had since losing Lake, and his bass-playing skills are simply superb. He's not afraid to play at a higher volume than normal, or to put different effects on his bass, and he's able to both create a solid foundation and to augment the general sound well.

The most novel part of the sound of this lineup comes courtesy of David Cross, master of violin and viola (and mellotron, as needed). The modern cynic might feel a bit uncomfy at the idea of a fulltime violin player in a rock (ha) band, given that history hasn't shown this can produce consistently tasteful results, but such fears should most definitely be laid to rest. Cross shows an amazing ability to accentuate the dark mood that permeates so much of the album, yet is also able to create occasional stretches of surprising loveliness. There are also a number of passages that show him playing his instrument in such a way that definitely doesn't match anything I've heard anywhere else - it's hard to be innovative in playing a violin, but he definitely pulls it off.

The biggest coup for the band, however, came in the percussion section. First, Robert managed to snatch up a maniacal eccentric by the name of Jamie Muir. His percussion style was WILD, a kind suited to total avantgarde improvisation, and very different from anything previously found in prog rock. He's responsible for many of the most exciting and unexpected moments on the album, throwing in a useful enough dose of instability to really give the album an edge. Yet as interesting as this is, his brand of insanity is the kind that is much more effective in either a distilled fashion, or even better, a kind useful in a mentor-student relationship. In other words, Muir needed a student...

...and who should need a teacher but Bill Bruford. Bruford, by his own admission, had peaked with Yes' Close to the Edge - he believed that any followup by Yes could only be "Son Of Close to the Edge," and he did not see what else he could do within a Yes context. So he tendered his resignation from the band before that album's tour; Fripp was all too happy to snatch him up, and Bruford was all too happy to have a new start. In my opinion, Bill had proven within Yes that he was one of the top three or so drummers in the world of major rock bands, but he did have one slight weakness; his style tended to be a bit too anal at times with his precise, jazzy rhythms. Under Muir's tutelage, Bruford took his previous style and crossed it with healthy doses of spontaneous, instinctual power, and in the process made himself (in my mind) the king of all drummers. His drumming on this album is nothing short of spectacular, combining the best aspects of his Yes work with stretches that defy all possible expectations of quality.

This bizarre mix of players and ideology introduces itself to the world in a big way with the opening 13-minute title track (part one - part two closes out the album). The first 2:50 or so is devoted to a relatively quiet marimba improvisation, with bits of chimes here and there, and also with occasional bits of violin (I guess... it's hard to tell what exactly is what on this album) chiming in to increase the ominous effect. About halfway through, Bruford begins slowly riding his cymbals, gradually increasing their volume as the marimbas fade into the background, raising the apprehension and feeling of expectation of the listener to very high degree. Then the main piece begins - Cross begins playing an INCREDIBLY spooky violin line while Fripp plays some distorted notes here and there, then disappears for a couple of seconds, then builds it back up again, and then there's a MONSTROUS distorted heavy riff played a few times (with some soloing overdubbed). Then it's violin again, the distorted guitar notes come back with heavy bass in tow, the tension builds again, and then there's that riff again! Fripp throws in a very brief typical guitar line for him, and the band breaks into a weirdass jam, featuring Muir creating rhythmic woodblock noise in the midst of it all. This goes on for about a minute, the groove slows down, and then they break into another even wilder jam (app. 6:15-7:35). Fripp's guitar and Wetton's bass are most prominent here, but take special care to notice the absolutely INCREDIBLE drumming from Bruford here. The combination of power and speed here, oh man, this has few, if any, analogies in the rock world, I can tell you that.

Eventually, around 7:40, the jam ends, and the piece returns to Cross' hands. His playing over the next three or so minutes can't really be explained in terms of rock music, but ... have you ever heard the Camille Saint-Saens piece "Dance Macabre?" It has this whole creepy "dead people at dawn" atmosphere to it, and for whatever reason, I'm always reminded of it by Cross' playing here. But I digress. Eventually, this playing fades out, the initial violin lines pop back in (the ones before the "main theme" pop up), and we hear a bunch of really quiet voices mumbling things over the lines, before the violin and bass help fade things out. And that is how you build a brilliant introduction to an album.

The next three tracks aren't as brilliant, but part of the reason for that is that they have lyrics, and as such are closer to being "normal" songs than the exploratory opening track. Not that normalcy is inherently inferior to experimentation, of course - I usually consider prog tamed with "convention" to be superior, but let's face it, this incarnation (at this point) was better at experimentation than songwriting. Still, that hardly means these tracks are anywhere near bad. "Book of Saturday" is the weakest of the lot, but it's still a pretty decent ballad with bits of weird guitar and violin sound to accompany an ok melody. "Exiles," on the other hand, is a major winner - the lyrics don't add much to the effort, but the vocal melody (and delivery) is terrific, and Cross' violin theme ads more than enough resonance to make up for the lyrical deficiencies. The song does have the drawback of a little too much meandering in the instrumental breaks, with Fripp messing with spacey feedback and ideas that have nothing to do with the rest of the song, but hey, at least he makes the song totally unique by doing so.

Flipping over to side two, we're greeted with a bizarre percussive rhythm, overlaid with all sorts of gritty guitar feedback and wordless syllabic vocals, serving as an introduction to "Easy Money." The song itself has a really cool vocal melody, with all sorts of neat percussion underneath that, and then it breaks into a really eerie, pretty quiet (yet suprisingly intense in its quietness, and I'd guess because of the quietness) jam, with Fripp leading the way with some absolutely terrific soloing. There's bits of mellotron here and there to augment it, but the emphasis is clearly on Fripp, until about halfway in, where Wetton becomes the highest instrument in the jam, not letting it down in the slightest. Not surprisingly, the song then closes out with another iteration of the verse melody, louder and more intense this time around, fading out with some VERY disturbing laughing sounds. It's hardly the best track on the album, but it's definitely a worthy inclusion.

So thus ends the sung portion of the album. But not the album itself! In fitting fashion, the band decided to close out the album with 14-and-a-half minutes of instrumentals, split over two tracks. The first, "The Talking Drum," is just about the textbook definition of how to properly work a lengthy crescendo. It starts off very, VERY quiet (with a buzzing fly sound, for some reason), with Muir randomly banging on bongos (I guess), until Wetton starts playing a simple bassline again and again about 1:40 in, with Bruford riding his snare in lockstep fashion. And then Cross pops up, working off a brilliant up-tempo (yet somber) theme and playing it every which way. Eventually Fripp joins the party, throwing in his own theme that he plays every which way. Slowly but surely, the intensity reaches an utterly feverish pitch, with all these seemingly disparate ideas working as one to drive the listener into a total frenzy. My brother and I once decided that, essentially, this is the music you'd hear on the elevator down to hell, and I still stand by that assessment.

Then out of nowhere, the piece grinds to a halt, there's a screech of guitar feedback, and we launch into "Larks' Tongues in Aspic 2," the best riff-rocker prog has ever seen. In some ways, I prefer later live versions to this studio original, but make no mistake, this original has an atmosphere and aspects untouched by later versions. Fripp manages to take his high quality riff and present it in (I count) three variations over seven minutes, with all sorts of cool interplay between guitar and bass and ESPECIALLY Cross' violin. The sound that Cross squeezes out of his instrument at the 4-minute mark of the song, over the heaviest riff, is just about the scariest noise I can imagine ever coming from a string instrument. I'll tell you what it sounds like to me - it sounds like a lark screaming (after all, the title is a recipe involving larks), and for whatever reason, the thought of a screaming bird just sends all sorts of horrid feelings through me. His soloing over the next minute or so shouldn't be forgotten either, though. In any case, after what seems like forever of building up the tension of the "softer" theme of the song, we hit the final climax, which has an apocalyptic sound not really matched elsewhere in music. It then seemingly fades out forever, and we end with a slow, slow slide until the last note of feedback disappears.

And there you are. If any significant general flaw can be expressed for the album, it's that it is most definitely music solely for ears and brain, and not at all for the heart. Even then, though, the band is excused by the fact that the music is so well constructed and planned out that, despite a dearth of actual heartfelt resonance, the band is able to simulate it pretty well by messing with your feelings of comfort and well-being. Point is, it's a friggin' great album, and one that NO prog fan worth a grain of salt can do without. Also, one last thing - do not try to judge the quality of this album after one or two listens, the way you would most other albums. I tried to take that approach with it, and as a result I feared this album like nobody's business. Listen to it once, put it away for a while, listen again, put it away, etc until you start to get an idea of what's going on. One day, you'll find that the structured aspects of the album start to stand out from the chaos, and soon it will start growing on you until you wonder how you ever made it through life without it.

Daniel and Corine Bosch (dcbosch.optusnet.com.au) (11/13/02)

I'm gonna say it right off the bat - this is my favourite King Crimson album. With it the Cross/Fripp/Wetton/Bruford (and Muir for this album) incarnation of the band is born. And how! This is where KC move away from orchestral style prog and the jazzy styles it had used on all the previous efforts and invented a much tougher sound. Improvisation, for better or worse, became the main emphasis. All the musicians are brilliant, which was not true for any but the very first incarnation of Crim up to this point. Yes, the lyrics are not as distinctive as Sinfield's, but they are not the emphasis - sound, improv and trying new things musically are the order of the day. Every track is great, even "Book Of Saturday", which showed there was more to this Crimson than just hardcore improv and scaring people! "Exiles" is the one track that harks back to their past. To my ears, have Greg Lake sing it and it would not have sounded out of place on In The Court. My favourite tracks, however, are the three instrumentals. I can't think of adequate words to describe how wonderful they are to me. 10 out of 10 seems horribly inadequate!

bsitting.mail.math.ucsb.edu (11/13/02)

Wow! This album took me at least 6 listens or so before I even started to appreciate this album and see any relative order to this album. (And even more to like most of the songs here.) "Book of Saturdays" is perhaps the weakest track here. But, it seems very jazzy to me, minus those backwards guitar solos.

The album really starts cooking for me (minus the superb first half or so of LTA part 1, love that CRRRUNCH!) is "Easy Money". It seems the percussion is off the beat from the riff in the intro., and yet it seems so right! My personal favorites has to be "The Talking Drum" (painfully great buildup here, with seemeingly eastern influence) and "LTA part 2" (another great riff, and good rhythm section, too. The violin screeches are the only thing painful to my ears). Overall, 9(12), due to the intentional dissonance from time to time and it taking SO long to get into. (But, I still highly recommend it, if you have the patience.)

ryan boyce (rboyce73.hotmail.com) (11/27/02)

Yeah, this album is pretty scary. I'll be honest the first time I heard part 1, with the violin introduction, I was thinking, "What the f...?" But the album grew on me. Man, part 3 rules doesn't it?

Akis Katsman (watta502.yahoo.gr) (9/30/03)

Wow! A really good album! I needed some time for it to grow on me, but I finally got it! Both parts of the instrumental 'Larks' are amazing, the whole band shines here, especially Fripp and Cross. The intro of the first part is too long, but I don't mind since the rest of it kicks fat ass. Love the Fripp solos! Part 2 is maybe even better, proto-'prog metal'. I think bands such as Rush and Dream Theater owe a lot to this album. The other instrumental, titled 'The Talking Drum' is brilliant and scary as hell. The violin is superb. The 'real songs' are great too. 'Exiles' is maybe the best Crimson ballad since 'Epitaph', with excellent violin and vocal melodies. 'Easy Money', though not an absolute favourite of mine, has some kick-ass parts and lots of weird effects. Cool! And there's 'Book Of Saturday' too, a nice pretty short ballad. In general, one of the best and most experimental Crimson albums and a very good buy. 8.5/10.

Trfesok.aol.com (05/03/07)

The musicianship on this album is absolutely amazing. If you had only heard Asia, you'd find it hard to believe that Wetton ever played bass like this!  There's a section in the title track where it threatens to go into "Moonchild"- type ambience, but, fortunately, it doesn't. Otherwise, no real flaws in this album, if you like the sound. "Accessible noise" is how I'd put it. Still, as a more traditional prog fan, I do like the first album better.  I miss the folk (did Fripp ever pick up the acoustic again after this album?) and classical influences that Fripp almost totally jettisons here. "Book of Saturday" comes closest (Wetton later did it live with more conventional arrangements), but Fripp still can't resist putting in one of his Frippertronic parts to weriden it up. The album can really only be appreciated by listeners with a certain amount of maturity.

  By the way, Richard-Palmer James was actually a founding member of Supertramp, believe it or not. He left after their first album. Maybe that explains why early Supertramp vaguely resembles early Crim.

Joe Bloggs (ericmushroomwilson.hotmail.co.uk)

I would disagree that Book of Saturday is a weak track. I think it's beautiful and has a great melody. But I guess that's just one of those subjectivity things. For whatever reason, I enjoy that particular track more than you or some of the other commentors appear to.

Well, anyway, this is a very good album. I've heard some people say that Jamie Muir's percussion detracts from the music but I don't agree at all, I think it adds to it if anything and I like the approach of just using any old thing as percussion (if you've ever seen the list of his various instruments and objects used from somewhere in the liner notes, there's a lot of odd stuff used on the album). The riff that opens Easy Money is very good as is the wordless vocal melody after it. Larks' Tongues Part 2 is built around a great riff and is a very good piece although I have to say it can sound a bit tame compared to some of the live versions. Conversely, though, many of the live versions kind of lack the clarity of the studio recording. Larks' Tongues Part 1 is very creepy and unnerving I think. When I listened to the album on headphones, Lark's Part 1 pretty much scared the hell out of me. Did you ever notice a part where a quiet voice says something ending something like "to hang by your neck upon a gibbet until you are dead"? I think it's a recording of a radio play or something.

MATTHEW CONSTANTINE (11/22/08)

FACT Most of the feedback and other bizarre sounds strewn throughout this album come from Muir.  "Percussion and allsorts" - the allsorts mostly being homemade wind instruments that are sort of glorified party poop-whistles.

"matt faris" (7headedchicken.gmail.com) (01/13/11)

Your review of this album is very detailed and descriptive. I can tell that you really love this music. Me, I think "Book of Saturday" is very melodic, and has one of my favorite "straight-tone" Fripp rhythm parts, as well as one of my favorite vocal parts from John Wetton. And I just can't get enough of "Larks' Tongues In Aspic, Part II." I think someone on your site said that they thought the band was associated with witchcraft around this time, and to that I would say: Just because a band names one of its albums *Larks' Tongues In Aspic *does not automatically make them witches. I think some people read into things too much, forgetting that art is able to tackle many subjects, saying many different things about those subjects in various creative ways. Besides, I've never heard any of the band members say that they were.

"David Sheehan" (davidasheehan.gmail.com) (04/13/11) John,
I agree with the above commentator: This is also my favorite KC album. I like it so much, if fact, that at this point in my life I would almost certainly give it a perfect score. I know you obviously disagree, but I think it's both the best album of 1973 (yes, better than Dark Side of the Moon, Quadrophenia, and Selling England by the Pound) and the best prog album of all time. I think I prefer it over Red (which is admittedly a pretty close second in the Crimson catalog) do to its more diverse sound. Really, I've never heard another album that sounds remotely like this. The combination of David Cross's strings and Jamie Muir's weirdass-ness along with the amazing chops of Wetton, Bruford, and Fripp just could not be duplicated. Also, I think that instrument which introduces the album is a kalimba (also known as an mbira or "thumb piano"), though it doesn't credit anyone as playing one in the CD booklet. Unless I'm mistaken (I've read the tiny instrument credit page twice), no one is credited with a marimba either, so who knows. Great review.

"Jacopo Muneratti" (04/13/11)

This album marks the beginning of my favourite incarnation of King Crimson, and though I like it a lot, it's the one I listen the least from that era (but not the one I listen the least by KC).
Anyway it's a well balanced album, greatly composed and brilliantly played, I just happen to like best the other 3 (I count even USA). The title track which opens and ends the album is very very good. Part one has a great atmosphere, very dark and eerie, combining fast parts with creepy ones, and part two, my favourite, is fast, captivating and aggressive.
"The Talking Drum" is the only song I'm not that fond of. The ideas are good, the playing is excellent, but I think it goes on for too long, and if I'm not in the right mood it might even annoy me!
As for the sung songs: "Book of Saturday" is very cute, with beautiful vocal harmonies, and good guitar lines (some of it even taped backwards), the dramatic "Exiles" is better when played live, but the studio version is great as well because it has that great acoustic guitar that is not on any live version, and "Easy Money" is an excellent composition, highlited by an inspired jam in the middle.
Talking about the band:p> John Wetton is the best singer the band has ever had in my opinion (and possibly my favourite singer... no not my favourite artist, that one is Frank Zappa): sometimes it's difficult to fully undestand what he's singing, but his voice is so powerful and his singing so great that we can forgive him. And as you say, his bass playing is superb. His bass sounds so rude, powerful and violent. Levin is probably the best bass player KC had in terms of musicianship, but he's the one I like the best.

Bill Bruford, similary, is the best drummer the band has ever had (and unsurprisngly the one the band kept longer). He can play everything: he can play fast, he can play slow, he can play hard, he can play simple, without ever missing a beat. And, isn't he inventive? He never plays the same thing twice. Those two guys together are a bomb!

David Cross is very personal and distinctive, and even though sometimes in concert he has problems with the violin (probably due to the fact that Wetton and Fripp's volume on stage was at terribly high volume!), he's a very good musician, and plays mellotron very well.

Jamie Muir is weird, eccentric, inventive and all, but I honestly don't think the band lose that much when he left. I don't feel like his absence is noticed that much on *SAAB* and on *Red*, probably because Bill Bruford could handle inventive percussion parts as well.

And Fripp's playing on these albums is the best he ever did: those musicians suit him fine, and he's able to tear great solos and great guitar parts.

Personal favourite on the album: "Easy Money"
Rating: 8/10

Theo Duncan (theoduncan01.icloud.com) (05/13/16)

If you like this album (which I know you do) and the best KC releases, check John Mclaughlin’s Mahavishnu Orchestra. There’s some heavy prog-jazz-rock fusion that they do, particularly on their releases The Inner Mounting Flame and Birds Of Fire that you should check out. If you haven’t already that is.

(author's note): I know those albums well and love them.

All of these considerations still strike me as accurate, more or less; the key factor in prompting me to bump up the rating, though, is that most of the negative points no longer strike me as especially pertinent. Regarding the "redundancy" issue of the material that ended up on SABB: rather than whine about having identical versions of these tracks in two different contexts, I instead find it better for me to admire the sheer balls and musicianship needed to walk out on stage, declare that you are going to use recordings from this show on your next album, make up fifteen minutes of it on the spot, use another twelve minutes for one of the gnarliest and most precise pieces in all of prog rock ("Fracture"), absolutely nail all of it in one take and not require overdubs. Furthermore, even if I may not love every minute of "Starless and Bible Black," the fact that the band could immediately switch gears from the hellish noise of that improvised piece into the delicate improvised beauty of "Trio" (so named because Bill Bruford was able to restrain himself from joining in on drums and possibly ruining it) shows that it had a command of its collective abilities that borders on terrifying. If there's any redundancy to be found in regards to these tracks, then it's ultimately SABB that's the redundant case (and I'm not saying that it is, just that a better case can be made in that direction); hearing these tracks in context cannot help but increase my admiration for this incarnation of the band and its general approach considerably.

The Larks material contributes a lot of greatness to this album as well. Ok, so "Book of Saturday" isn't really the kind of track that has the potential to explode into something greater in a live setting, but it still sounds nice in this context, and along with the softer beginning part of "Lament" and the bulk of "The Night Watch," it helps give an effective gentler balance to some of the set's rougher material. This rougher material includes the opening "Easy Money," which practically explodes through the speakers in the beginning, and where Wetton's slurred wordless singing has much more intensity than before, and the mid-song instrumental passages make it clear that the band is in a special place that night. Later, near the end of the set, is a terrific rendition of "Exiles," where Wetton's vocals provide a ton of emotional resonance, and where Fripp's noisy meanderings have more of an impact than in the original (where it seemed like a noisy piece was in active battle with a more conventional one). And finally, there's the band's performance of "Talking Drum" and "Larks 2," immediately preceded by a noisy improvisation in "The Fright Watch." Originally, I couldn't stand "The Fright Watch," and I considered it a nusiance of bass *thwonks* and guitar *squals* and improvisatory "spooky" mellotron that had to be endured in order to get to a great version of "Talking Drum" that was followed by a so-so version of "Larks 2." Now, though, I consider the three performances inseparable, and that's probably the way it should be: maybe "The Fright Watch" is fundamentally just a way to rev up the band for "The Talking Drum," but it absolutely succeeds in that regard (the sound of the bass and drum parts coming out of the mellotron is one of the great moments on the album), and the band is able to go from *TENSION* to *UNBEARABLY IMPOSSIBLE TENSION* by the time "Talking Drum" goes into "Larks 2" (in contrast, the studio version was the band just going from *nothing* to *TENSION*). As for "Larks 2," I've come to realize that there isn't really anything wrong with it here; it's a typical "Larks 2" performance (which means it's great) that sounds a little sub-par just because it followed such a great version of "Talking Drum." Anyway, do yourself a favor and don't try to think of this as three separate tracks, even if that's how it's listed: these absolutely need to be listened together, and together they make for one of the great wacky adventures of the King Crimson catalogue.

Finally, "21st Century Schizoid Man" may not be one of the all-time great versions of the track, but then again this wasn't a regular part of the band's setlist at the time, so a little bit of leeway is in order here. As with "Larks 2," it's good to take a step back and recognize that "Schizoid Man" is just the kind of track whose very nature is such that, unless something goes horribly wrong, there's going to probably be enough good stuff in there so it can be terrific even if it's not one of the very best renditions out there. Fripp is the clear star of the show here, with a little bit of solo time given to Wetton and little to Cross, but Fripp does plenty of noisy stuff that will please most fans of the band. I guess it would be better if Wetton's vocals were distored a la USA or the original, but that's just a small nit-pick.

Overall, while this album may have enough small issues to keep me from wanting to rate it as an all-time great live album, it nonetheless strikes me as an essential purchase for anybody who considers themselves a King Crimson fan. Yes, this album puts the more "difficult" aspects of the band, the aspects that found their basis in free-form jazz and related musical styles, in close proximity to the more "conventional" music of people who want their King Crimson a little more structured and math-rock-ish, but that should be considered a point in favor of the album, not one against it. Even if I don't love every individual aspect of the album, I still can't help but appreciate this as a great performance from a clearly great band.

"Jacopo Muneratti" (03/13/10)

Well, I think it's an OK release. Nothing to die on it, but no crap either, KC fans will be absolutely delighted in hearing it. As you said "Easy Money" is possibly the best song on the album, although "Book of Saturday", "21st Century Schizoid Man" and "The Night Watch" (partly the same as on SABB) go down well too. The live improvisations never bothered me on SABB and don't do it there either. I think your rating of 7/10 is fair enough

The first half contains three "regular" tracks interspersed with three improvs, and both aspects of the band have their ups and downs in this half. The opening "The Great Deceiver" is one of the best songs Crimson ever did, full of whacky melody twists, gruff and fast rhythm work, and a NEAT electric violin line on top of it all. It also has some hilarious lyrics against organized religion (as well as the most startling opening three words to any major prog album I can think of), inspired by a band trip to Rome. Supposedly, Fripp visited The Vatican and nearby living areas, and found his way to a gift shop in the area. He went in, and sure enough, saw that they sold, among other things, cigarettes, ice cream bars, and figurines of the Virgin Mary. Needless to say, he was disgusted, and related the tale to the band; the result was the text found here. It would be hard for me to think of a reason for a fan of the band to not love this track, even if they somehow dislike the rest of the album.

The following "Lament" is an odd chimera of pleasant balladry, screaming hard rock and angry prog jamming, and it's a weird case of a song where I like all of the individual pieces but feel like it comes together poorly. The opening verse, laced with bits of violin and mellotron, is also graced by some lovely singing, but then the song turns into a hellish mix of chaotic drumming, popping basslines and Wetton screams over frantic Frippisms, and it took me a long time to regard the song as not representing the worst aspects of prog rock bands to ruin decent material through over-complication. I more or less like the song now, but I find that I have to focus on aspects like Bruford's killer drumming more than on the overall picture. Much better is "The Night Watch," which I've always categorized as "King Crimson plays The Moody Blues" and thus have always enjoyed. The melody is rock solid balladeering, and Fripp's guitarwork (in the long drawn-out introduction but also in other bits in the song) manages to shape the song into something quite moving, bizarre sounds for a ballad and all. Not surprisingly, this was the lead single for the album; it had little to do with Crimson's new direction on the whole, but it was definitely the best impetus for drawing people into having interest in the album.

The other three tracks side one are instrumental, with the exception of some vocals that were later overdubbed into the end of "The Mincer" (which starts out centered around some eerie tuneless mellotron, then turns into a bunch of angry guitar-driven atmosphere over an ok groove before the vocals come in and the tape suddenly ends). "We'll Let You Know" has always struck me as an example of the potential downsides of the band's approach to live improvisations; there's a long period of the guitar and bass circling around each other in search of what exactly they want to do, and when the groove eventually hits, it feels oddly clumsy and, in parts, as if it's tripping over its own feet. The thing is, by the standards of improvised music, this is pretty impressive, and the fact that it doesn't completely collapse is a testament to the band's abilities; it's just that I find myself kinda wishing that the band had taken this basic idea as a starting point, cleaned it up in a studio setting, and presented it in a more traditional form. Oh well, I guess that wouldn't have been consistent with what they wanted to present in the context of this album. The remaining improv, though, speaks to the surprising beauty the band could sometimes muster up when it was making up music on the fly. "Trio" begins with a quiet Fripp mellotron improvisation, then Cross comes in on violin, then Wetton quietly plays some understated bass, and the piece grows into the three of them circling around and playing off each other in a beautiful and delicate fashion. Again, maybe the piece could have been reworked and polished into something even greater, but in this case I think that would have been to its detriment; there's a vitality here from the spontaneity of its creation that would be lost in a studio reworking.

The second half of the album consists of but two instrumental tracks, one of them improvised and one of them as tightly composed and intricate as anything on Larks (and both taken from the Amsterdam concert that also produced "Trio"). The title track (which immediately preceeded "Trio" in that concert) initially follows the band's frequent rubric (as shown in "We'll Let You Know" for instance) of "Let Robert and John make a bunch of noise until they stumble on something they both like, then build a groove out of it as Bill works himself in," and while I'm not terribly fond of it on the whole (it's 9 minutes!), I have to admit that the bass groove that Wetton eventually produces (while Fripp makes all sorts of squealing guitar noises and Cross does whatever on his mellotron) is a pretty great one, especially after Bruford locks into it. The vaguely atmospheric mellotron bits in the last couple of minutes are a decent touch as well.

Where I've gone from "this kinda sucks" to "ehn, it's fine" about the title track, "Fracture" has gone for me from "This is good but horribly flawed" to "This may be flawed but it's awesome anyway." My position on the track has long been that, at 11:17, it's a little overlong and could be reduced down to 6 or 7 minutes pretty easily, and for a long time I held to the idea that it's pretty overrated by KC fans. The thing is, though, while there's still that part of me that overthinks things and sees ways to make the track a little more "efficient," it's nonetheless also true that I've found myself in the mood for this track (warts and all) an absurdly large number of times over the years, and it finally wore me down to the point that I consider it a borderline classic from this era of the band (I'd probably rate it last among the "composed" instrumentals of the 70s KC, but that just means it's an A- track instead of an A or A+). The various themes (based around a whole-tone scale, just as "Red" would be) are deployed in a way that ramps up the tension of the track to a nearly unbearable level before the band breaks into an incredible hard-prog groove that's one of the greatest head-banging moments in all of prog rock. I'm not necessarily sure if this is the best available version of the track (again, it was recorded live), but it's up there, and Bruford's "woo!" during one of the more intensely grooving sections is awfully charming.

People often go out of their way to praise the album on the grounds of how dynamic and complex it is, but I don't think that's the right way to approach it; I mean, it is dynamic and complex, but that's just a natural outgrowth of having so much of the album coming from improvisations (granted, "Fracture" is plenty dynamic and complex itself). Rather, I think that the best way to sell this album to a more casual listener is to frame it as an album from a band with roots in tradition but that wanted to see just how far they could stretch the boundaries of rock music, without having any idea of whether a given idea would work but with enough musical chops and common sense to make it plausible that it could. I still would recommend getting Larks and Red before this one, and would offer the caution that enjoying those is absolutely no guarantee of enjoying this one, but nonetheless it finally won me over, and if I respect it more than I enjoy it, I nonetheless embrace it in both ways.

Daniel and Corine Bosch (dcbosch.optusnet.com.au) (11/20/02)

Sometimes I think this album gets a bum rap. Sure, it's not as good as Larks' Tongues In Aspic (but what is?!!?) but I think there is still alot of good music here. "The Great Deceiver" was the very first King Crimson song I ever heard - it blew me away then and it still does today. The other "songs" ("Lament", "The Night Watch") are both excellent too, particularly "The Night Watch", which I think is Richard Palmer-James' best lyric for the band (it helps that it's about Rembrandt and I'm half Dutch!). As for the improvs, "We'll Let You Know" is a little rambly but short, "The Mincer" I think has a good, creepy feel to it, "Trio" is very pretty but the first 90 seconds is just too quiet, the title track is a long improv which works in bits and is a little dull in others. Finally "Fracture" seems to me like a sequel to "Larks' Tongues In Aspic Part II. I agree that it is overlong - if it were, say, seven or so minutes long it would be killer, but there are still some nice riffs in it. Overall I do like this album. 8.5 out of 10. BTW, the more I listen to this album, the more David Cross I hear. He is maybe not used quite as extensively as on the predecessor, but he is there plenty, including some very good keyboard work.

Akis Katsman (watta502.yahoo.gr) (9/30/03)

Similar to the previous album, just a little less exciting and more filler. The high points are 'The Great Deceiver' (which is great indeed!), a fantastic album opener with a kick-ass riff and excellent vocals from Wetton, 'The Night Watch', another great epic ballad similar to 'Exiles' and perhaps the best song on the album, and the noisy 'Fracture' which although too long, has some really great moments (like the awesome ending). 'Lament' and 'We'll Let You Know' are okay too, the first being a ballad which then turns to a hard rock song with cool screams from Wetton and the other is a short groovy improvisation, I enjoy it. However, the last three songs on side 1, while having a couple of good moments, are annoying. 'Trio' is just pointless chamber music, it does nothing to me. 'The Mincer' starts cool, but the vocals at the end are awful and the ending is like they ran out of tape (I think it happened, indeed) and the title track is not much exciting than 'Moonchild', although it has a nice short groove somewhere in the middle. In general, an album which summarizes both the good and the bad sides of King Crimson. Buy Larks' Tongues In Aspic first, it's much better. I give this record a 7/10.

MATTHEW CONSTANTINE (11/22/08)

Trio is based on a descending chord sequence that they'd been toying with onstage for much of 1973.  Work-in-progress versions available on bootlegs feature the violin and are set in a minor key.  The finished major-key version (jammed into shape when the band were exhausted, onstage in Amsterdam) was later comitted to memory as a "composition" and performed once or twice on the 1974 tour (see the "Mainz-or-is-it-Heidelberg" gig released via the Collectors Club).
The Mincer's main ingredients are extracted from the same lengthy improvisation which also supplied those (wonderful!) Maximum Distress tracks on the Great Deceiver album.

"Jacopo Muneratti" (04/13/11)

This is the album that most people has problems with. I can see why: lots of weird music, a couple of overlong passages and structures not simple at all. But I don't mind all of this stuff! To me this album is a bit superior compared to *Larks*, and the playing is even better. Plus I like the fact that most of this numbers were composed at the moment. Take "Trio" for example: how come this came to light? Granted, this is not of my favourites on the album, but God, imagine the band going on stage and playing something like this without even thinking about it first. And Bruford stayed completely silent during the track! Not something that everybody could do. "We'll Let You Know" may be a bit sloppy, but I like it... bass/drums interplay is excellent and Fripp soloes like mad and it was a good idea to overdub vocals over "The Mincer" (even though the truncated ending is so-so) because it's a track that otherwise I wouldn't pay much attention to. The only problem I have with the improvisations is the long title track. It's not a bad track overall, I like the creepy atmosphere and as background music it works, but I think it's definitely overlong.
"Fracture" is the only instrumental track that was composed, and I think it's very good and not overlong (maybe only a part approx near the 7:00 mark). The riffs are excellent, Fripp plays like there is no tomorrow (he said this is the most difficult track he has ever wrote) and the rythm sections shines as always. I love it!
As for the sung songs, apart from the already mentioned "The Mincer" (btw, trivial note, I called my bass Mincer thanks to this number ;-) ), there is the menacing "The Great Deceiver" with Cross' excellent violin in display, the multipart "Lament" which is one of my favourite songs from the era (another opinion that doesn't seem to be shared by many people), expecially the agressive part and the beatiful "The Night Watch", with Wetton's incredibly great vocals well supported by an inventive and moving guitar by Fripp.

Personal favourite on the album: either "Lament" or "Fracture"
Rating: 8,5/10

Admittedly, some of the tracks are pretty enjoyable. Though I'm not wild about Bruford's tone in the track, "Sartori in Tangier" distinguishes itself above the rest by being dancable, complex and meditative all in one, making itself an instrumental worthy of inclusion on Discipline, even if it might not have fit in perfectly. I'm also comfortable with "Heartbeat," a moody New Wave pop ballad with a tasteful, moody backwards guitar solo, and "Waiting Man," a decent upbeat percussion-driven moody world-beat-based track. The latter would get a LOT cooler in concert, but I'm not too bothered by what's here. And hey, "Two Hands" is an ultra-pretty ballad, with some lovely echoey guitar work over a nice bassline, albeit with some slightly sappy lyrics.

Two of the other tracks are okayish, but they still border on filler. The opening "Neal and Jack and Me" is somewhat annoying for having the exact same guitar interplay that ended Discipline, and the melody is too chaotic to be memorable but too ordinary to be impressive. "Neurotica" is slightly better, but not much more than a second-rate "Thela Hun Gingeet," with rants about life in a city over chaotic jamming.

The album also closes on a relatively low note - "The Howler" is a pretty complex composition, but complexity definitely doesn't necessarily mean quality, and it just screams out filler with every note. As for "Requiem," supposedly it's a tribute to John Coltrane (I don't know why, though - Coltrane had been dead a good long time before this album), but that seems to just be an excuse for unstructured atonal jamming with lots of noise and little purpose. I like the first minute or so, but the rest, ugh ...

As much as I've more or less dissed on the album, though, I wouldn't want to give it less than an 8 - it's not anywhere the level of Discipline, but some of its differences from that album can (in theory) be considered improvements (e.g. the presence of "real" songs), even if they're actually a regression in practice. Regardless, this should be your last purchase of the 80's KC-trilogy, and even then you should be looking for it cheap.

Daniel and Corine Bosch (dcbosch.optusnet.com.au) (11/27/02)

A less successful follow-up no doubt, but not without its treasures. I agree that the best track is "Sartori In Tangier", but I also like "Waiting Man" very much and, as much as it is too "normal for KC, "Heartbeat" is a very beautiful song. I also do quite like "Requiem" but then again I think I have already revealed myself as being a little more partial to the improv side of Crim than yourself (not a criticism, just an observation). 7.5 out of 10.

MATTHEW CONSTANTINE (11/22/08)

The Howler was an instrumental on the pre-album tour.  Lyrics were added in the studio (as was the atonal slide-guitar solo played by Belew).  Requiem (which I love, quelle surprise) wasn't a "straight" improvisation, it was built up from an improvisation.   The guitarists weren't getting on too well at that point: so when Fripp wanted to repair something he played, Belew decided to add another guitar part, then Levin added something, then Fripp added something else..etc..etc.  At the end of the track, the Frippertronic drone has modulated because the tape machines have caught some, but not all, of the ensuing chaos.

Cameren Lee (04/13/13)

On your hexadecimal-based scale, this album is either a 9 or A for me. It's not Discipline, it's not TOAPP, and it sure as hell isn't Absent Lovers (though what is?), but I enjoy a large portion of it. Your hilarious Xanax comment is valid, though.

As for the last two tracks, I know what you mean about Howler being filler, but I really like a lot of it, and Requiem is very Coltrane-esque. I have a feeling ending the album on a tribute to him was a testament to the affinity the Beat Generation had for jazz. Maybe not Coltrane's free jazz (the last two-three years of his career and life), but that was very influential to Crimson anyway.

What makes this 2-CD collection so amazing and such an improvement over most of the studio versions of these songs is the amount of energy that goes into these performances, and consequently the way this energy makes these songs breathe. No longer are the Discipline tracks cut-and-paste constructions; no longer are the Beat tracks so subdued and sleepy in their moodiness; no longer are the Three of a Perfect Pair tracks underproduced and underarranged. Both Belew and Fripp are in top form on this album - there may be a bit too much division of their roles, with Belew taking a slightly disproportionate amount of the lead duties, "relegating" Fripp to riffage and soundscapes, but I don't mind when I'm listening (Belew is, after all, an EXCELLENT guitar player). Levin also rules immensely on this album, with his bass taking on the volume it deserves, giving an incredible mobile bottom to the sound with tones that can only be adequately described using water metaphors (that's a compliment here, by the way). And then there's Bruford ... perhaps this is apocryphal, but I am familiar with a statement by Bruford where he says, in effect, that he's prouder of his work on this album than of any other in his entire recording career (which is not a small amount by any means). His combination of rhythm and power here, supplemented by an ultra-cool echoey effect on his drums, is stunning beyond all possible description that I could give. If nothing else, get this album for the drumming, it will blow your mind.

The tracklisting is fairly standard - after all, the band had three albums under its belt by this time, so there wasn't too much need to delve into back catalogue. Still, the fact that there isn't much in the way of older material doesn't mean they don't do a good job with it. "Red" loses some of its abrasive crunch from the studio version, but gains in many other ways - for one thing, Levin's bass is able to give the song groove, something completely inconceivable when listening to the song on Red. I also much prefer the middle section here - Fripp's riffage is loud, echoey and SPOOKY, and contrasts the double-bass part much better than in the original. "Larks' II" is also done exceptionally well - the riffage is maybe a bit rushed and a little less crisp than before, but the track nevertheless turns out great with Belew's bizarre guitar solos taking the spot of what was once Cross violin lines, not to mention all the subtle twists in tone and mood provided by the revamped rhythm section.

The rest of the songs (aside from the six-minute opening "Entry of the Crims," featuring the band walking on one by one and doing all sorts of scary warmups) are taken from the 80's trilogy (six from Discipline, three from Beat and six from TOAPP), and not a SINGLE one of the tracks is inferior to its studio counterpart. I'd probably say that "Frame by Frame" doesn't really exceed the studio version, but other than that, I'd be very hardpressed to not gush about the quality of any of these performances. I could gripe about the placement of "Heartbeat" in the encore (I've always thought it should have been earlier in the show), but even that has nothing to do with the performance, an improvement on the already excellent original.

Aside from that, though (without mentioning everything), you have "Larks III" exceeding the original, "Thela Hun Ginjeet" DESTROYING the original (the electronic drum barrage near the beginning before Levin kicks in with his bassline is one of the greatest "sit up and listen NOW" moments I've ever heard), "Industry" being more energetic and even spookier than before ... the list goes on. "Indiscipline" is ten times what it was in the studio, with Bruford's drum assaults extended, the jamming made even more bizarre, and Belew varying his vocal tone and speed in such a way as to raise the tension even further than anything the original approached. And man, that's just some of disc one.

Disc two manages to be even better, amazingly enough. "Sartori in Tangier," like most everything else on here, blows away its studio counterpart (Levin's lines are more intense, the guitars are weirder, etc etc), and that merely kicks off an almost perfect stretch of music. While most of this disc deserves yet more excessive praise, the need to avoid overkill prevents me from doing so. Yet duty compells me to give special props to two tracks found here, and I can't help but oblige. First, there's the rendition of "Waiting Man" - the opening percussion groove is much more intense and moody than before, Belew's vocals are WAAAAAAAY more resonant than before, and Fripp gets to throw in his own high quality guitar solos into the mix, which were lacking before.

Yet as good as that is, its followup blows it completely away. This rendition of "Sleepless," and I'm completely serious about this, just may be my favorite live rendition of any track by any band EVER. Aside from the already brilliant bassline (even faster and more fluid than before), Bruford also gets into the act to a far greater degree than before. He gets incredible power out of his kit in synch with Levin's bass, and when he gets to the point near the end where he's supposed to pick up the intensity, he absolutely goes nuts in maintaining a powerful polyrhythmic groove that he maintains for the rest of the track. Meanwhile, Fripp's guitar is even eerier than before, Belew sings the vocal melody with more intensity than on the original, as well as making his guitar solos in the middle that much spookier, and so on and so on. Everything comes together in a way that absolutely boggles my mind, and by the time Belew is bellowing, "Won't you pull me out of the sleepless night?" the band has created a track that represents one of the worst insomniac episodes imaginable.

GET THIS ALBUM. I was doubtful towards King Crimson as a great band once upon a time - simply put, this album changed my mind. Never has hard-rock/art-rock/New-Wave/80's-pop sounded so good, and if you're interested in this incarnation of the band, you should get this first and THEN get the others. The studio albums might disappoint you after hearing these incredible renditions, but at the same time, this is most likely to get you into the band in the first place, so whatever.

Daniel and Corine Bosch (dcbosch.optusnet.com.au) (12/04/02)

No doubt, the best live album the band ever did. Virtually every song performed is an improvement on its studio original. The only thing I do miss (and I'm sure you don't, John!) is there is no improv passages - but even Fripp admitted this was the least improv-dependent version of the mighty Crim. Another 10 out of 10!

bsitting.mail.math.ucsb.edu (2/19/03)

My introduction to this incarnation of the band. Admittedly, despite all the energy in these performances, it took me some time to get into this sound. That said, I'm not heads over heels in love with this sound, and things start to get a bit samey after awhile (not so with the "Discipline" material so much, as well as a few scattered tracks like "Satori In Tangier" and "LTIA 3" which positively rule.) "Red" loses its edge (just a bit) due to the updated guitar sound (or lack of distorion), though on the other hand "LTIA 2" seems to have gained some intensity. Finally, "Industry" and "Dig Me" don't really do anything for me. But, all negatives taken (relatively minorones at that), this album is a major reason I bought "Discipline". I took an immediate liking to "Elephant Talk" and "Indiscipline", perhaps beacause they were off-the-wall. Overall, 9(13).

Ivo Samuel Giosa Domínguez (ivosamuelgiosa.gmail.com) (09/13/16)

"perhaps this is apocryphal, but I am familiar with a statement by Bruford where he says, in effect, that he's prouder of his work on this album than of any other in his entire recording career"

http://www.billbruford.com/faq.php#10

Tenth question. Even though it's not an "I'm proud of this work", but rather a "I hate this album a bit less than any other where I played".

Now there I'm here... this album is great. It's not perfect: I would have preferred the songs to be listed in a different way, rather than stuffing most of the harsher songs on the first disc and the poppy on the second. That way, I get a bit tired when listening. Also, "Entry of the Crims" is really dumb. I wouldn't complain if it was a minute long, because it does raise the tension to "Larks Tongues In Aspic Part III", but it drags for SIX minutes. What about "The Sheltering Sky"? Or "Nuages"? Or "Two Hands"? I could also say minor quibbles like how "Frame by Frame" loses its awesome introduction, how "Red" is a bet thinner than the studio version, and... well. But that's what prevents me from putting this albums as the highest of the top. It really deserves an E in your scale.

Unfortunately, as I write this, this album has been made largely superfluous by the archive release VROOOM VROOOM, reviewed below (and many months before I ever heard this album). Hence, there's not that much I can say for this that I haven't written already, especially since there's (naturally) a lot of overlap between this and that. Furthermore, the band isn't as on fire in this show as it would be in the performances captured on disc one of VROOOM VROOOM - the most obvious example of this is the runthrough of "VROOOM VROOOM" itself here, which falls much closer to the ok, somewhat plodding version on THRAK than it does to the jaw-dropping definitive version found on that glorious archive release. Compounded with a lack of "Dinosaur" and "21st Century Schizoid Man," which both appear in terrific versions there, you can probably see why I gave this a lower rating.

On the other hand, though, a good show is a good show regardless (most of what's not mentioned is just as good as the V V versions), and certain chunks definitely deserve special mention. I'm not sure if I prefer this version of "Larks' II" over the VROOOM VROOOM version, but it's definitely a close competition, and I should point out that the guitar tone Fripp pulls out during the third chunk of riffage would be enough to set off a small earthquake, given a loud enough stereo system. Other significant highlights include a nice runthrough of "VROOOM" to open, a lovely take on "Matte Kudasai," a GREAT version of "People" (there's a driving sense of majesty that sorely lacked on THRAK), and a funky-as-hell take on "Sleepless." This will never compare for me to the AL version of the track, of course, but there's so much hard-rocking butt-shaking groove here that I'm willing to let that slide and not penalize this for failing to overtake my favorite live track of all time.

Otherwise, though, there's not much that can't be found on VROOOM VROOOM. The one big advantage you might find if you're a purist is that this is from one complete show, whereas V V compiles the best performances from several shows, which will make it seem more 'real,' but whatever. If you're trying to collect as many great renditions of "Sex Sleep Eat Drink Dream" as possible, pick this up cheap.

MATTHEW CONSTANTINE (11/22/08)

The B'Boom album I think is most memorable for the audience-response (they love Elephant Talk don't they!) - performance-wise they sound like they're still warming up.

Now, I have to confess - I'm not wild at all about the second disc. This is somewhat ironic, considering that it contains several tracks from the 80's incarnation, which I definitely like more than the 90's version. While the performances of "People," "One Time" and "Sex Sleep etc." are done with a good amount of fire and energy, the performances of stuff like "Thela," "Indiscipline" and "Elephant Talk" are VERY routine and uninspired. I'll admit that it's kinda funny to hear Adrian purposefully rushing through the verses of Indiscipline, but I'm not particularly amused to hear tracks I once adored in a live setting just done ... ok in a live setting. Still, none of the performances out and out suck, so while I end up considering the disc somewhat vestigial, I'm not about to penalize the album seriously for it. Besides, it does have a couple of tracks tacked on that are pretty neat - a nice live version of "Walking on Air" in June '95, and a live solo Belew version of John Lennon's "Free as a Bird," with Adrian sitting at a piano and doing a dead-on Lennon impersonation. If nothing else, this disc is worth popping in just for that reason.

The first disc, however, is an entirely different story, and by that I mean it's damned near Absent Lovers quality. The first five tracks are taken from THRAK, and every one of them (except maybe "Dinosaur," which was really cool to begin with) improves drastically on the original. "VROOOM VROOOM" (along with the coda to "VROOOM") is incredible here, if only because there's tons more energy than before, and the whole live vibe really shows how important it is for complex music to be done by people who are really working like mad to make it happen. The tightness is unbelievable, and hearing this fierce riffage matched with intense, focused polyrhythmic drumming makes me love this track in a way I never could on the original. And hey, the coda is eerie and well-done too, so I'm not griping.

After "Dinosaur," the band goes into its "B'Boom"/"THRAK" shtick, and I'm sucked in WAY more than I was in the studio. Fripp brings out more and better sound effects than before, the drumming is more intense than before, and even the drum duet seems better here. As for THRAK, well, it does break into an improv in the middle, but the band keeps it relatively together, probably a function of them being so on fire during the rest of the show, and it doesn't grate on my nerves as much as one would normally expect it to.

Now, the rest of the disc is devoted to older material, plus a couple of well-done instrumentals (a VERY good drum-based instrumental in "Prism," a nice improv in "Biker Babes of the Rio Grande"). "The Talking Drum" and "Larks' 2" are both present - the presence of six musicians makes the buildup of "Talking Drum" even better than before, and the heavier guitar tones that Fripp had found since the band last broke up make this an INCREDIBLE version of "Larks'." Fripp has never done the track better (or louder!) than he does here, and if you're the kind of person who gets off on listening to Master of Reality for the earth-rumbling guitar tone, you've just got to hear what Fripp is able to pull off here.

Now, other than a fairly expected (but good) runthrough of "Red," the remaining tracks are a bit of a surprise. First, there's a live version of "Neurotica" (from Beat), with all the sound effects and noisy clang-clang of the original, only with more energy that automatically comes from doing a Beat track live. This pales to the biggest surprise of all, though - apparently, the band was very pleased with the reception they were getting in Mexico, so they decided to treat the crowd with a bit of a reward. And that reward is none other than "21st Century Schizoid Man," which Adrian hated to do because his vocals were totally unsuited to the song. Still, weaker vocal aside, the instrumental section is just fine, with the powerful ringing guitars doing their creative thing with as much oooomph as ever, so lovers of the track shouldn't be disappointed.

In short, KC proves once again here that they are a live band first and a studio band second, and they should be treated as such in assessment. Anybody curious about this version of the band is simply bound to pick this up at some point.

Andrew Creighton (ACreighton.teleflora.com) (8/10/03)

hey john - just thought i'd mention that i saw crimso on this tour, and that's a guitar belew plays on "free as a bird". it's put through some processing device and the sound of a piano comes out the speaker end.

MATTHEW CONSTANTINE (11/22/08)

It's worth noting that Belew's Free As A Bird, in which he sounds like he's forgetting the words, is actually a straight copy of the Lennon demo.  Belew is simply omitting the parts that Paul McCartney wrote.  (I love the way this emerges out of the post-Thrak jam, with Fripp soloing frantically, using his own "piano-tone", until Belew shuts him up - or maybe he recognises the chords Belew is playing, and freezes in astonishment?)  I would have noted, if I were you, that all the live versions of Dinosaur (except on the Deja Vroom video) have a very serious flaw - they don't contain the out-of-tempo middle section.  

I'll be honest with you: I'm not terribly big on the idea of improvisation in a musical setting. Well, ok, let me be careful with that thought. I do not believe that bands should play note-for-note copies of their studio material in concert, and on the whole I consider myself pretty tolerant of "jamming" during material that may not have originally featured any. The thing is, though, when a band has a section of a song reserved for jamming, that's usually not improvisation in the "pure" sense; most of the time, it's more of an extemporaneous presentation of ideas than an impromptu one, as it may not be fully pre-planned but it's built around an already established and discussed theme or idea. It's hard enough for bands to consistently be successful at that, but most of them can do it, and do it well (note that this doesn't exclude Crimson).

But this is different. Trying to get six people onto one page artistically, with no prior discussion or set direction, is an exceptionally tall order, even for six musicians as talented as those in this incarnation of Crimson (a lot of jazz musicians are plenty successful at it, but even more jazz musicians fail at it). From time to time, it seems like somebody in the group gets a pretty decent idea, and the others are able to focus sufficiently well on it to make it sound at least somewhat ok. But that is RAREon this album; most of the time, there seem to be six people with six different ideas of how the improv should go, and all of them fighting each other for the right to have their idea come out on top. And let's face it, six ideas, no matter how good they are, are not going to work if they're smashed together with no cohesion and with little deference between the players (this last part is the major key to the problem I have with this album); if you don't believe me, take your six favorite books, cut up the pages, and paste the words from them all together at random, and tell me then what kind of unreadable crap you've built for yourself (maybe this isn't a perfect analogy, but I don't think it's a terrible one either).

If you like this album for some reason, well, good for you; you're a stronger (and stranger) person than I. Some of this COULD have been a part of a great piece of music, but as is, it's just noise to me.

Daniel Bosch (bicycle_legs.optusnet.com.au) (5/31/03)

I guess I must be stranger than you, 'cos I do quite like this album. Yes, there ARE parts of it that are just noise, but other parts work quite well, and if I am in the mood this music works for me. I can see why it would not for many others - that is not a criticism, just an observation. I will admit, I have to be in the right frame of mind for this kind of improv, so I'm going to give it two marks - 7.5 out of 10 if I am in the right mood, 5 ut of 10 if I am not. Hope that makes sense (probably about as much as this CD does to some people!!!).

Aside from those tracks, the first two discs (of the THREE included here) consist of some improvs (more on that later), some THRAK tracks and some unexpected older songs. "One Time" is as pretty as ever, "Dinosaur" rocks like mad, "VROOOM" improves greatly on the studio rendition, "Sex (etc.)" rocks MUCH harder than the original did, and there's even a solid performance of a track ("Cage") that was on the pre-THRAK EP VROOOM. In short, this album does much to boost the credibility of the tracks originally done by the double-trio, and in combination with the quality of the TCoL material, makes an almost perfect encapsulation of the end-of-the-century version of Crimson.

The "unexpected" category is represented by two entries. First, Belew is given a chance to shine with a solo acoustic version of "Three of a Perfect Pair" (the only pre-90's KC track found here) - it's very cool, and shows that on that album, Belew really had found for himself a solid songwriting ability. Second, the band does a GREAT rendition of "'Heroes'," with Belew throwing an ad lib into the first line ("I will be king ... crimson ...) that has managed to attach itself permanently to my brain whenever I hear the original. Belew does a fine imitation of David throughout, and given that Fripp played guitars on the original, it should be little surprise that the track works as well as it does.

So that's it for the "song" material. What truly makes the album stand out, though, is the quality of the instrumental improvs. I hated THRaKaTTaK as much as anybody could, yet I find myself greatly enjoying the vast majority of these instrumental jams, and given that I don't usually listen to improv, that definitely says something. CRaPaTTaK just sounded like improvised noise - the pieces here sound like improvised music. It actually makes sense to me that the improvs here would be far superior to before, though - remember, when Crimson reunited in the mid-90's, it had been 20 years since an incarnation of Crimson had relied at all on improvisational jamming. Belew, Levin and Fripp had no experience in improv together, and Gunn and Mastelotto had never played with these people before at all. In other words, they didn't have enough of a familiarity to have any business trying to play off each other solely by instinct. By 2000, however, this group of musicians had spent more than a bit of time together, and they had played enough with each other to be able to better predict what each would do in a given situation. Hence, the vast majority of these jams really do suggest a "group consciousness" at work, and the cross of stability with the natural edge of improv really makes much of this stuff interesting.

One of the tracks is done twice - "Deception of the Thrush" was conceived during the various ProjeKcts, and while parts of it are just as disturbing as anything else in my collection, the overall effect is quite cool, and everybody does their own interesting stuff. Elsewhere, the rest of the material is improvised, and while I have NO intention of going through all of them, I must point out that one of them is so impressive that I can't help but name it my favorite of the set. "Improv: Munchen" is one of the most incredible pieces of music (from a technical perspective, anyway - it's totally soulless, but it's so cool I can let that slide) I've heard in a very long time, a piece based around a terrific multi-toned percussive rhythm that brings out one ass-kicking guitar or bass part after another. The music occasionally brings out parts of "Into the Frying Pan," but that's the only "crutch" they use - otherwise, it's just jamming so tight and monstrous that even Can in their prime would have sold their souls to reach this level. It's eight-and-a-half minutes seem like nothing at all to me, and in the end I only regret that they couldn't sustain this even longer. Find this track NOW, however you can.

Oh, it gets even better! Disc two has forty minutes of concert footage, including "Munchen" itself (if I recall correctly), and it's a gas to watch. Sure, you have to enter a password to see it, but don't worry about it - the password is rome.

Lucas Miguel (she_is_suffering.yahoo.com.ar) (03/30/07)

Hi!. My name is Lucas and I'm from Argentina....My english may not be very good....:P

  "Heavy Construcktion" is one of the best KC's live albums. The material from "The ConstrucKtion of Light" is EXCELLENT. I even enjoy ProzaKc Blues. The version of "One Time" is probably the best I've heard. "Three of a Perfect Pair" perfomed acoustically leaves me speechless....it's absolutely beautiful.

  The third CD is a BEAST!..."Tomorrow Never Knew Thela" is glorious..."More and Less" is also pretty good.

  One minor complaint: Both "Lights Please" tracks. How can Fripp and company be so fascists?, What's the big deal with photos!?....I don't get it...

  Anyway, this is a GREAT album....Don't buy "The ConstrucKtion of light", get this instead.

9/10

  This site rules!. Thanks for your time John. Your reviews are EXCELLENT!.

The rest of the album, then, is basically the following: one song that consists of Belew singing pretentious meaningless phrases through a "heavenly" vocoder, broken up so it's spread out through the EP and taking up four tracks; the title track, essentially a parody on nu-metal; a beautiful acoustic ballad; a pretty (but short) Fripp soundscape; a decent electronic percussion-driven instrumental (kinda like the first part of "Waiting Man," but not really); a weird jazzy/bluesy piece ("Potato Pie," which is DEFINITELY something different from whatever had been done by Crimson before). In other words, scraping the BOTTOM OF THE BARREL.

On the other hand, these aren't the worst scrapes ever. The title track is hilarious - Pitchfork.com trashed it for what it considered an out-of-touch, half-assed indictment of nu-metal, and that may be true to an extent, but I think they missed the point. As much as Belew seems to be mocking that particular genre, it also seems that he's making fun of his own difficulties in coming up with good lyrics from time to time - in other words, I don't think one can exactly accuse the band of being old-fart curmedgeons in this case. ESPECIALLY when, about three-and-a-half minutes in, you can quietly (but distinctly) hear somebody laughing his ass off as Belew keeps singing, "I'm gonna have to write a chorus! I'm gonna have to write a chorus! I guess I'll repeat the chorus!" Aside from that, though, the track has some terrific heavy guitar interplay, twisted in that good ole Crimson manner.

Better for me, though, is the lurvely "Eyes Wide Open." I suspect as of this writing that the version on the album will have a "fuller" arrangement, but I think this version, with its solid acoustic foundation augmented by quiet bits of Fripp soundscapes and lovely basslines kinda like those in "Walking on Air," stands up just fine. The vocal melody could possibly be expanded a bit, but the chorus is just terrific, with a slightly unpredictable twist in the "because you'll never know ..." part, and Belew's voice does a great job in making it as pretty as it deserves.

Elsewhere, well, it's like I said. There's not a lot of stuff here when you get down to it, but I have to admit that the way the tracks are distributed, not to mention the decent level of diversity (ie something that was SORELY lacking on ConstruKction), makes this an entirely pleasant, if not necessary listen. And besides, the very end of the album is filled with all sorts of HILARIOUS clips of stereo banter, from part of what seems like a demo of the title track to Belew reciting a totally absurdist rant on Einstein to Fripp prattling on about whatever. It even ends with the very tail end of what I think is a live performance of the title track of Court!! Neat!

On the surface, it may not seem that different from the band's previous two efforts. An apt comparison can be made to THRAK, as this album boasts a similar mix of "normal" songs with various complex, discordant instrumentals. To a certain extent, it can be considered the same old same old set of Crimson ideas - Discipline-style guitar interplay, loud blasting processed guitar chords, some bits of Fripp soundscapes, etc. It doesn't break any truly significant ground (though it mines much of the already trodden ground in quite innovative ways), and if you're like the wanker at Pitchfork.com who gave this a 6/10, you might have trouble getting past the idea of "a progressive rock band that doesn't progress." And yet, for all of that, it's much better than either THRAK or TCoL, for a couple of big big reasons.

Reason number one is that the band no longer deemed it necessary to keep King Crimson and the various ProjeKcts separate. The decision to keep the two apart, as the band had chosen to do for TCoL, had always struck me as a significant mistake, an ill-made attempt to have Crimson seem experimental and "inaccesible" on the surface while deliberately withholding the very setting where the band was willing to do odd jamming. Here, though, the group made the wise decision to incorporate a couple of the major highlights of the ProjeKcts, the tracks "Level Five" and "Dangerous Curves" from Level Five, and one of the versions of the title track here is actually a direct adaptation of "Deception of the Thrush." I mean, it wouldn't be great if the band decided to dump some poorly done improvs from the ProjeKcts on here, but seeing as this version of the group had totally won me over with their improv and-or experimental skills on Heavy ConstruKction (I mean, sheesh, go listen to "Munchen" again why don't you), I'm pleased as punch to have these suckers on the album.

The second reason I like this so much is that, in my opinion, this is an EXTREMELY "listener friendly" album. In no way does the sound suffer from the monotonous overly-processed technophilia that saturated ConstruKction - to the contrary, much of the drumwork here is acoustic (a significant development, seeing as that really hasn't been true since, er, Red), all the instruments have an adequate amount of breathing room, and nowhere does one get the feeling that the only reason for the existence of a track is for the band to get to show off its various electronic gadgets. The selection and ordering of tracks is also extremely well-thought out, as the band does a good job of alternately showing its weird side and its more accessible side (while still showing that the two aren't really as far from each other as one might first guess), as well as bookending the album with variations on the title track, which is essentially, well, a love song. I mean, it doesn't really matter how disorienting the middle of an album is, you're just not going to feel that "bullied" by an album that starts and ends with a love song, and that's a very good thing.

Speaking of the title track, I can easily see where somebody might not consider the band's tactic with regards to it as the best thing in the world. You see, it's presented in four variations on the album, and given that the album has only eleven tracks total (one of which is an introduction to another track), one could make the argument that this only serves to mask a lack of material and ideas. Now, to an extent, I can agree with that argument, and in fact that's one of the things that almost automatically precludes it from a higher rating. On the other hand, though, it's quite interesting to see how many things the band is capable of doing when working with even just one verse and one vocal melody. The opening track even goes so far as to feature Belew singing a capella, and while this apparently bothers some people, I'm not going to complain, as the lyrics aren't that bad or cliched or whatever, and for whatever reason I just really dig that snippet of vocal melody.

The second version of the track, however, contains numerous parts in its near eight minutes, and must be considered one of the highlights of the album. The first third or so kinda reminds me of "Nuages" from ToaPP, as it features a similar mix of "cloudy" guitar sounds and "watery" basslines (in addition to some bizarre guitar lines over them, vaguely like those in "Sheltering Sky" but not really), but then it incorporates "Shoganai" from the Happy EP (ie the track I described as, "a decent electronic percussion-driven instrumental") to VERY good effect while Fripp builds up a soundscape underneath it as Belew sings the vocal melody. The end result is that, without really doing that much to go out of their way to "prop up" the track, the band nevertheless manages to give the track a definite sense of majesty, and very deserved majesty at that.

Now, the third and fourth versions aren't as stunning, but they aren't bad, just a little less inspired. The third version, as mentioned earlier, is directly built around "The Deception of the Thrush," and while part of me considers doing that a bit of a copout ("TDotT" had been around for a very long while before this album), it's quite amusing to hear the band take such "evil," disturbing music and use it as the foundation for a love song as they do here. And finally, the fourth version is built around a soundscape Fripp created during a live show in '97, and while once again the music around the verse melody isn't that "substantial," it nevertheless uncovers a good chunk of emotional power in the main theme, and I honestly can't think of a better possible way to finish the album.

As omnipresent as the title tracks are, though, the true charm of the album lies in the "main" material. The most significant development in terms of the playing, one that cannot be overstated, is that for the first time, the true versatility and talent of Gunn and Mastelotto are put on full display. Though ostensibly the "rhythm section" of the band, I would make the argument that the closest analogy of their abilities shown here to transcend that term is (and forgive of this blasphemy, but I'm dead serious here) the rhythm section of The Who in their prime. Gunn is, in theory, the "bassist" of the band, but he doesn't actually play bass - rather, he uses a Warr guitar, which (if I understand correctly) is an instrument that can cover mostly the whole range and sounds of both bass guitar and "normal" guitar, with little difficulty in making a transition between the two. Similarly, Mastelotto functions as the band's "glue" when needed, but in those occasions where Fripp or Belew take over the rhythmic base of a composition, he shows an ability to take on pretty much any rhythmic and sonic pattern that the situation requires. Not only does he use electronic and acoustic drums with equal aplomb, he also mixes "traditional prog" rhythms with several aspects of modern "electronica" (or whatever the kids of 2003 call it) extremely effectively. In any case, the point of all this is that, on this album, Gunn and Mastelotto's emergence allows for every member of the band to freely interchange roles as desired, and that fluidity is why I feel justified in making the Who analogy.

Now, as far as the actual tracks go, well, they basically rule. Aside from edits of "Happy with ..." and "Eyes Wide Open" from Happy ("Happy" is shortened by about a minute, while "Eyes Wide Open" does in fact receive a slightly fuller arrangement, with the percussion brought higher in the mix and all the various instruments made louder), both of which are just great, there's also a quite decent "normal" rock song called "Facts of Life." While some people may not be happy with how it vaguely in some ways sounds like a 'regular' early 00's rocker, let me assure you that such similarities are tenuous at best. This is DEFINITELY Crimson, with all sorts of rhythmic epilepsy going on and Fripp throwing in massive solos and dissonant guitar interplay popping up all over the place. The lyrics are fairly dippy in places, and the vocal melody isn't the best Belew ever came up with, but the sung parts are definitely not where the main appeal of the piece lies.

This leaves three instrumentals, each quite a bit above the instrumentals on the last two studio albums. One could theoretically say that "Level Five" is derivative of Crimson ideas past, with most of the ingredients coming from Crimson's regular toolbox, but hell, if we're going to say that every piece that relies on tri-tones is ripped from "Larks 2" or "Fracture" or that every piece that uses interweaving guitars is ripped from "Discipline," we may as well say that every guitar pop song is ripped from A Hard Day's Night. It's one thing to use these parts to consciously make the listener associate it with pieces of the past, hoping that the good will for those older pieces will rub off on the new, and it's another to take the basic ingredients and recombine them in a way that has no resemblence to anything from before. "Level Five" has a TON of things going on, yet never loses sight of the main theme, even after seven minutes of insane interplay and booming processed chords and cool-as-hell drumming. I'll never love it as much as I love, say, "Larks 1," but it's still one of the most interesting additions to the Crimson catalogue in a good while.

A couple of tracks later, we come across "Elektrik," which, and don't laugh, reminds me in parts of something one might find on an early Steve Hackett album (come on, I can't be the only person for whom the mix of the guitars and those woodwind-sounding synth noises conjures up vague images of Voyage of the Acolyte). It's only in parts, though, and the bulk of it is based around Fripp and Belew doing their alternating-note shtick while Gunn and Mastelotto carry the bulk with all sorts of complex rhythms and distorted Warr parts (with eerie undecipherable whispering popping up here and there). One should note, though, that Belew and Fripp don't just rely on the same shtick - they play off each other in a LOT of interesting ways throughout.

The ultimate highlight of the album for me, though, is "Dangerous Curves." The general idea of the piece is an extended, rhythmic crescendo, but if you think for one second of telling me that that makes it into a "Talking Drum" ripoff, I'll punch you in the face. The main rhythm is simply one of the best I've heard in my life, spearheaded by Gunn, played off by Mastelotto and covered with a soundscape by Fripp and some creepy-as-hell guitar noises by Belew. It is absolutely IMPOSSIBLE for me not to find my head and torso rhythmically bobbing to this piece, and I'm quite glad that they manage to prolong this as long as possible by cutting back the crescendo at a couple of intervals in order to sustain it that much longer without overloading the listener too quickly. It's absolutely incredible, and an ample demonstration once more that, in the hands of a band like Crimson, a relatively "simple" idea can be built into something great as long as enough care is put into it.

Overall, then, this is a great album, one that should firmly put to rest any laments of, "Oh, how I wish Bruford and Levin were still in the band!" The Fripp/Belew/Gunn/Mastelotto lineup firmly took the asterisk off of their place in Crimson history on this album, and established themselves as a powerful creative force all their own. It's a shame this was the end of things, but still, what a nice way to go out.

Daniel Bosch (bicycle_legs.optusnet.com.au) (5/31/03)

Now this is much more like it. As you perceptively mention, John, the like between KC and the ProjeKcts has been blurred, much to the benefit of the music. Simply not a duff track. My favourites - "Level Five" and "Dangerous Curves" 9.5 out of 10.

MATTHEW CONSTANTINE (11/22/08)

The Warr touch-guitar (if I'm not mistaken) is basically a Chapman stick shaped like a guitar.

So why not a higher grade for the album? Because there's nothing at all revelatory about it, that's why. What made me enjoy Heavy ConstruKction so much was that (a) the ConstruKction of Light material sounded so much better on stage than on the album, and (b) the improvs managed to entertain me so much despite the fact that I don't especially care for purely improvised music (and definitely not through most of King Crimson's history). The Power to Believe material sounds terrific, but it already sounded terrific (and it sounds pretty much identical to the studio versions), and all of the other material (apart from Fripp's opening soundscape, which I quite enjoy as a walk-on introduction) could be found in equally entertaining form on Heavy ConstruKction. I really wish, with this album, they'd just bitten the bullet and made it a double, if only to include "The Deception of the Thrush," which was the one chance for the band to vary its performances on this tour. As is, well, I'd almost have to say that the band's immaculate technical skills work against them on this album; some clear struggle to replicate the material would have provided some needed variation.

Basically, this is another good example of my general adage that great live shows don't necessarily make great live albums. Look for it if you're curious, but again, I'd rather recommend the DVD.

A few years later, an interesting collaboration emerged which ultimately grew into this not-quite-but-kinda-sorta-King-Crimson album. While the Fripp/Belew/etc lineup had made a point of avoiding material from the earliest incarnations of King Crimson, another group had sprung up to fill the niche. 21st Century Schizoid Band emerged in 2002 with a lineup of the brothers Giles (Michael on drums, Peter on bass), Ian McDonald (yup, that one) on woodwinds, Mel Collins (yup, that one) on his own set of woodwinds, and a guitarist/vocalist by the name of Jakko Jakszyk. While this band only lasted for a couple of years, it essentially made Jakszyk an honorary alumnus of King Crimson, and through this and other connections he ended up striking up a friendship with Robert Fripp. In 2010, Jakszyk and Fripp got together to record a bunch of semi-ambient noodlings based around guitar, keyboards and Fripp's soundscapes, and Jakszyk decided to adapt them into songs. Collins decided that he wanted to add some saxophone parts, and eventually the trio was able to get Levin and Harrison to serve as the album's rhythm section.

As a collection of songs, this album isn't especially impressive; it didn't surprise me to learn that these pieces were retro-fitted into songs only after the fact, and in those stretches where the material becomes more tune-centric, it rarely reaches a level much beyond decent. The material is also often very sleepy and subdued on top of not being especially memorable, and neither Levin nor Harrison do much on the whole to try and liven things up. Despite these downsides, though, I find that the atmosphere is usually interesting enough to compensate for the shortage of memorability and surprising length of the tracks (the album is 42 minutes long over the course of only 6 tracks). I find it very interesting that, despite the album not fully committing itself to an ambient approach (which would have geared it 100% towards establishing interesting atmosphere, as opposed to the 50/50 approach of this album), and thus making me have to face it as a song-based album without many distinct ideas and with those ideas stretched out over long periods of time, I don't find myself losing patience with the material. I find this especially fascinating in the closing track, "The Light of Day," where the band bathes in soundscapes and quiet guitar/sax noodling (with bits of vocals here and there) for nine minutes without going anywhere discernable, but where I also find myself feeling a little surprised that it lasted nine minutes and a little sad that it couldn't go longer. The final guitar/keyboard textures of this track are especially fantastic.

Another track that I find myself drawn to for similar reasons is "Secrets." It gets a little silly when it gets into old man slow prog boogie mode in the middle, but the droning passages at the beginning, with Jakko singing, "I don't sense the time is passing ..." and the like, with Collins occasionally punctuating the low-pitched growling soundscapes, are just beautiful. Along similar lines, "This House" starts as wordless vocal harmonies over more soundscapes, and it morphs into having some very lovely parts (with a lot of alternating gentle guitar passages) that never quite congeal together but that circle around each other in a way that sounds just fine.

The other three tracks are a little more explicit in trying to be song-based, but I can't help but think that they sound like inferior versions of similar material done with Belew on vocals in the 90s and 00s. Yes, the presence of Collins adds a new element that hadn't been present in the Belew era, but it's not like Jakszyk sounds tremendously different from Belew as a singer, and the songs only really take off in the parts where the vocals go away for an extended period of time. The opening title track is a slow ballad, "The Price We Pay" is mid-tempo with poppy bits, and "The Other Man" has elements of being a noisy menacing rocker, but all of them kinda bore me until they get the parts that were probably from the original sessions that spawned the album. Fripp and Jakszyk show great chemistry in these, with Fripp mostly sitting back and providing a backdrop but sporadically emerging to play in a more typical manner, and there are some marvelous moments to be found on here. It's too bad that they're buried in songs that are otherwise just ok.

It's probably for the best that this wasn't officially called a King Crimson album; an actual King Crimson album would have contained input from all involved parties from the beginning, as opposed to this album's process of putting together the album one layer at a time. As a side ProjeKct, though, this is perfectly reasonable, and the presence of fresh creative blood is certainly welcome. It didn't lead to an immediate tour or reforming of the band (and in fact Fripp briefly officially retired from the music industry a year later), but it did lay the groundwork for a great live tour three years later, and if nothing else this project should get credit for that.

This incarnation would eventually provide more than enough live documentation of its brilliance, so it's somewhat odd in retrospect that the first live release in this era felt so anti-climactic at the time. Live at the Orpheum is a 41-minute sampler of performances from the band's September/October performances at the Orpheum theater in Los Angeles, and while this would have been a delightful offering back in the days of LPs, it feels slight and forgettable in light of everything else that emerged from this band. Nonetheless, even if this is the least necessary of the releases from this era by a long shot, it's worth noting that what's on here absolutely tears. After the walk-on music, the album breaks into "One More Red Nightmare," and while Jakko's voice doesn't carry the same weight that Wetton's did (I don't hate Jakko's voice but his singing is definitely the weak link of this incarnation, to the extent that this incarnation has weak links), the song is still heavy as can be, with Collins' sax doubling the basslines in a great way and doing great jazzy noodling in the middle that captures the spirit of the original while not emulating it exactly. After a brief drum interlude ("Banshee Legs Bell Hassle," one of a handful of recurring instrumentals from this era that would feature the drummers working with and against each other), we come to "The ConstruKction of Light," which has the vocal portion removed but still features the same intricate guitar work as before (it's still funny to me that this track has always seemed like kind of a dud to me in studio and has sounded great in every live version), and Collins provides more terrific jazzy chaos over the guitars and bass and constant cool-as-shit drumming.

Up next come two long-lost tracks from Islands, which largely ended up proving the necessity of this incarnation all by themselves. "The Letters" is pummeling and intense and noisy in a way that far exceeds the original, as much as I enjoyed it, and "Sailor's Tale," well, this incarnation's live rendition of the track exceeds the Islands-era live renditions as much as the Islands-era live renditions exceeded the original studio version. It just sounds SO FULL, and the way the drums are deployed is so well considered (during the first half it's primarily just Rieflin going to town, with the three-drum attack only brought in for the final portion), and the unison guitar/sax riffs are powerful, that I just go giddy every time one of these versions comes up in my iPod shuffling.

And, of course, the album ends with a version of "Starless," which was definitely the emotional highpoint of the shows for me and probably for most people. No, this version (and others from this incarnation) of "Starless" isn't on par with the original studio version, or even with the typical live versions as captured on Starless or Road to Red, and there are things that can be poked at if somebody is so inclined (Jakko's singing, the relative lack of growl in Levin's bass, some other small things). At the same time ... it's "Starless." It's "Starless" with three drummers. It's great.

Still, individual great performances can't keep this album from seeming at least a bit slight, and even as somebody who generally loves the live material from this era, I tend to forget this album even exists. Get it if you're not sure about whether or not to proceed further, but just know that if you get the later live albums you may not listen to this again.

As in 2014, the idea of this tour was to present King Crimson's catalogue as performed by a single unified Crim, with older material adapted as necessary to the strengths and desires of the group as individual members and as a collective, and this becomes clear immediately with the band's presentation of "Larks' Tongues in Aspic Pt.1." The major sections of the original are all still present, but they're adapted to a lineup with three drummers and a woodwind player and (especially) no violinist, and as necessary they are truncated so as to give the proper sense of them without worrying about total fidelity to the original. After the introduction, in which gamelan drums (played by Mastelotto) replace the quiet marimbas of the original while the quiet chimes of the original remain, the ominous lines originally played by Cross are now played by Fripp, and when the main ascending riff hits, anchored as it is by Collins' baritone saxophone, it feels every bit as necessary in this version as it did in the original. After Jakko and Fripp take turns on Fripp's crazy guitar lines from the original, and the three drummers do an abbreviated version of the bass/percussion jam of the original, the mid-section that once belonged to Cross now emerges, only now it belongs to Collins on flute, as he plays all manner of atmospheric flute parts and throws in snippets appropriate to the city in which they performed (in this show, he plays a bit of "O Canada"). Eventually the final section emerges, with Jakko playing the lines that once belonged to Cross while Fripp plays an incessant rhythm part, and the piece wraps up in traditional fashion. This version, and every version of "Larks' 1" from this era, is a complete and total triumph.

The concert generally doesn't let up from there. Some of the pieces here are also found on the Orpheum set ("The ConstruKction of Light," "The Letters," "Sailor's Tale," and "Starless" are all here, as is the drum instrumental "Banshee Legs Bell Hassle," and they're all basically of comparable quality to the performances on Orpheum), but many are not, and they're worth mentioning. The song titles that will invariably catch somebody's eye first are the ones from In the Court of the Crimson King: as was standard on this tour, this concert features performances of "Epitaph," the title track, and "21st Century Schizoid Man," the first two of which were new in 2015. The band does its very best to replicate the grandeur of the original versions of "Epitaph" and the title track (it helps to have Collins available on woodwinds and to have keyboards available that were up to the task), and if they don't make it all the way (Jakko is no prime Greg Lake, as he himself would almost certainly admit, though once again I don't think he deserves the venom he sometimes has received from observers of this era), they get most of the way there. As for "21st Century Schizoid Man," it sounds way better with Jakko on vocals than it ever did with Belew (even if the double-trio lineup had pulled off some interesting instrumental performances of it), and the instrumental breaks are a total monster, right down to when Gavin takes a well-deserved solo.

Among the other older pieces, "Pictures of a City" sounds fantastic but also not that fundamentally different from the original, just fuller, and "Red" basically sounds like itself but with welcome woodwind parts splattered all over it, but the rest of them sound significantly different. "VROOOM" gets turned into a cross between its original self and a 50s boogie rocker, thanks to swapping out the main up-and-down guitar riff for a saxophone part playing half of it and the bass holding down the other half, and while I like the original more now than I used to, I think this reinvention is an absolute hoot and I consider it one of my favorite things to come from this era of the band. "Easy Money" uses the original studio lyrics and not the smutty lyrics that Wetton used to sing in live performance, which makes me a little sad, but it sounds terrific, with Collins contributing all sorts of nice embellishments to go with the developments that come from having two guitarists and three drummers. And finally, "Level Five" receives a comprehensive makeover, replacing the guitar-noise-back-and-forth section with alternating drum hits from Mastelotto and Harrison (an idea that originated in the brief 2008 tour), and replacing what had originally been Belew's guitar freak-out section with a noisy saxophone part that fits the song perfectly. I still love the original "Level Five" and all of the many, many versions I have of it from when Belew was part of the band, but to me, this version is every bit as canonical as that one.

Finally, there are a couple of new pieces, played together without break so as to seem like a single piece, and while they're not masterworks, I genuinely like them. "Radical Action (To Unseat the Hold of Monkey Mind)" feels in some ways like a THRAK leftover, updated to fully incorporate Collins, while "Meltdown" feels in some ways like a Power to Believe leftover (largely due to the alternating guitars that provide its foundation), with decent sung parts and room for the 3-drummer setup to show its full potential. In a certain sense, these tracks (and all of the other material this incarnation would perform that had been written in this incarnation) are the weakest link of the performances by this incarnation (they don't really stand a chance up against the classics), but I'm absolutely glad that these pieces exist to lend an additional sense of freshness to these performances.

As I said, this isn't the very best that this lineup would achieve, but it's still a full concert from a great band performing great material at a high level, and unless you're a total cynic about the idea of this lineup and this incarnation, there's no good reason not to hear this at least once. And hey, if you do like this lineup, there's really not a good excuse to go cheap and just buy one or two live albums from this era; with the exception of Orpheum, you may as well get them all.

For the album portion of the set, which this review cares about, the experience is also very enjoyable, but it's also a little weird until you get used to it. I assumed that the album portion would be akin to the video, with the songs ordered in a way as to replicate a quintessential concert from the era, even if they weren't all taken from the same show. Instead, however, the band and the producers made two decisions that make this set stand apart, for better or worse, from the other live albums recorded in this era. First, in a move akin to what the group did with the live material on Starless and Bible Black, the audience is completely removed from the mix, and the recording quality is so pin-drop perfect that the set practically functions as the studio album that the band never actually recorded (kind of like the King Crimson equivalent of Genesis Revisited II from a few years earlier). Second, the tracks are not ordered in such a way as to come close to replicating an actual concert, and instead the tracks are grouped in such a way that each of the three discs has its own theme (each of the three discs is actually granted a distinct name). The first disc, titled "Mainly Metal," mostly contains instrumentals (only "Meltdown," within a three track series of the title track, "Meltdown," and a new instrumental called "Radical Action II," as well as "The Light of Day," taken from A Scarcity of Miracles, have any singing), and its new material (relative to the previous two albums) is limited to "The Light of Day" and "The Talking Drum" / "Larks 2" ("The Talking Drum" sounds especially interesting and different in this context, with a majestic rising synth line underpinning much of it while Collins goes bonkers on sax). Disc 2, titled "Easy Money Shots," is somewhat of a miscellaneous dumping ground, and the new material here is the opening "Peace" (adapted from "Peace: An End") that precedes "Pictures of a City"; "Suitable Grounds for the Blues" (a completely new song with a main riff that's bluesy in the same way "ProzaKc Blues" was bluesy, and which, for all of the fun noise therein, isn't quite as interesting as its spiritual predecessor),; "Interlude," a 2-minute instrumental with both Collins and Jakszyk on flute; and "A Scarcity of Miracles." And finally, disc 3, titled "Crimson Classics," is all songs from Court and Red (you can guess which ones), with the exception of a new percussion number called "Devil Dogs of Tessellation Row" (it's worth noting that each disc has its own percussion number: disc 1 has "The Hell Hounds of Krim" and disc 2 has "Banshee Legs Bell Hassle").

Part of me feels bad for rushing through the other material on these discs, but here's the thing: as uniformly great as the performances are on here (and I mean they are great), they're also not fundamentally different from the performances that had already appeared on the previous live releases. For example, I absolutely love, LOVE the version of "Sailor's Tale" here, but there's no clear reason that I should love it more than the versions on the previous two albums aside from recording clarity, and this general ends up being a small damper on how much I can write about this album and how high of a grade that I want to give it. As much as I love this release, it's not quite era-defining like some of the later releases would be, and that matters a little bit. The bottom line, then, is that, as with Live in Toronto, there's no good reason not to own and enjoy this if you like this era of the band, but if you go in looking for a definitive document of the era, you might feel a tiny twinge of a letdown. That's the smallest of quibbles, though.

This album has a lot in common with the previous two live releases, but it also catches their live show in a bit of a transition stage. The first thing worth noting is that Bill Rieflin had taken a sabbatical (which people later realized was due to health issues), and by this time his drums and keyboards role had been filled by Jeremy Stacey, who probably differs from him in some ways but to my ears sounds essentially his equivalent. The second thing worth noting is that, rather than locking themselves into essentially the same setlist (with some wiggle room but not much) in perpetuity, the band decided to expand its scope in some unexpected ways. Some of these ways were widely praised, and one of them would cause some controversy going forward, but they definitely provided new adventures for the group.

The most controversial addition around this time (and going forward) was "Indiscipline," marking the first time the band decided to tackle a Belew-era track with vocals. Jakko makes the fascinating decision not to try and deliver the lines in the same way Adrian would, and instead he sings the lyrics (often having his guitar follow along underneath), and the effect is definitely startling the first time. I don't especially mind this, and the track lends itself so well to the new lineup (the three drummers have lots of fun revving up the tension in the introduction, and Collins is all too happy to throw some discord into the sound) from an instrumental side that I really enjoy it on the whole, but I won't look down on anybody who dislikes it.

Another source of fascination for the album comes from the band's decision to incorporate Lizard material, which this lineup had conspicuously sidestepped in its first couple of years. They do a rousing performance of "Cirkus" that turns out to be a perfect match for Jakko's vocals (and the expanded lineup is able to live up to the clatter and bombast of the original in a way that exceeds it), and they do a lovely version of "Dawn Song" from that album's title track (before a somewhat hilarious transition into "Suitable Grounds for the Blues"). The performances of this material in this context strike me as somewhat having the feel of a trial run, which the band obviously deemed successful given how they would expand things in coming years, and I'm glad to hear them here.

The remaining two prominent additions couldn't be much more different, and they're placed next to each other in this album even if they didn't occur next to each other in real time. The first of these is a performance of "Heroes," done as one of the encores in the Vienna show, and it's just a delight, a stomping bit of straightforward stomping anthemic pop with everybody throwing their whole selves into the performance. The second of these, then, comes from a couple of months previous (in Denmark), and was actually promoted in advance as the main attraction of this set: the band resurrects "Fracture," and it is glorious. This was apparently the biggest challenge for Fripp to pick up again among all of the material here (which helps explain why it would float in and out of the setlist rather than becoming a mainstay), but I'm glad he bothered, and Jakko trades off many of the guitar phrases with him in order to share the load. Collins is also a superstar here, especially in many of the flute flourishes he adds to give this a fascinating psychedelic feel that the '73-'74 versions lacked (that doesn't mean this version is better than those, but it does mean it has its own flavor).

Elsewhere, the set is pretty standard, or at least it's standard if you have heard the previous handful of releases, and while the performances are wonderful they aren't able to overpower me (also, this iteration had not yet peaked), so I'm muting the grade a smidge. I should note that, in addition to all of the great performances, both novel and established, the set also contains some improvisations built around Fripp's pre-show soundscapes, but I don't really care about them and somewhat consider them this set's version of the "Apple Jam" (from All Things Must Pass). In any case, if you enjoy this iteration you should definitely get this, but I would get it after the albums that immediately surround it, at minimum.

The lineup this time around has eight people: Bill Rieflin returned to the fold, but rather than return to the center drum position he had initially occupied (still occupied at this point by Jeremy Stacey, who also still plays many of the important keyboard parts), Bill took an additional keyboard role for texture, joining the backline players in the stage configuration. In a certain sense, Bill is a redundancy, but at the same time he's deployed in this show primarily as a source of additional noise, such as in the theater-swallowing din of the mid-section of "Easy Money" (the album itself dampens the volume of those sounds but they were overwhelming in person), and generally the band is clearly very happy to have him around.

Just as they had expanded their breadth of material during the touring stage that produced Live in Vienna, this show captures a stage where they had expanded things even further, and while this means that some fan favorites drop out (they dropped "Sailors Tale" this time around, and neither "Epitaph" or the Court title track is here, among others), this also means that there are new (or as is usually the case, old in a new way) delights to focus upon. One of these, "The Errors" (a new track originally titled "Radical Action III") is decent but not especially rousing (it's a new track that mines familiar territory in terms of guitar work and saxophone approaches, and while I like it fine it's easily my least favorite part of this set), but the other new inclusions are nothing short of spectacular. After the opening "Larks 1" (with some Fripp lines that are relatively simple by his standards but are terrifying in how they're deployed, as well as some flute parts from Collins with an appropriate Chicago flavor), the band breaks into "Neurotica," which strips away all of the Belew voiceovers (Jakszyk only sings the chorus) and leaves in its wake a spectacular bass-anchored groove with the percussion and saxophone parts building around it while guitars swoop in as needed to fill it out. After following with "The Errors" and "Cirkus," the band builds on the teasing promise of "Dawn Song" from previous tours with the full-fledged 12-minute "The Lizard Suite," which managed to explode the roof off the theater multiple times and drew multiple rounds of standing ovations during the track even though it was clear they weren't done yet. For me, this was the point in the show when I fully realized the extent to which this incarnation of the band had gone beyond a nice-to-have into something absolutely essential; I still have a lot of skepticism towards the studio version of the Lizard title track, but this wasn't just great, it was clearly the highlight of the show and one of the greatest things the band had ever put together. Also, this is the point in the show when it became essential to have eight members: it was very much an "all hands on deck" kind of performance.

The first half has two other major new additions worth noting (the second half, while spectacular, is all tracks that had been done in previous tours, though put together in a row they're just ridiculously awesome). The band decided follow "The Lizard Suite" with "Fallen Angel," another one they had never done live before this tour, and while it isn't especially different from the original (other than Wetton's voice getting replaced with Jakszyk's somewhat shriller voice), it's a fantastic performance, and in other circumstances would have been a contender for the main reason to get this album. And finally, the band closed its first set (though for space reasons it's the second-to-last track on the first disc) with "Islands," which is done in a more laid-back, almost smooth-jazz way in the middle section (after all, they don't have a trumpet, they have a saxophone), and while I do think there's small degree to which this approach clashes a bit with the atmosphere inherent to the original, the sounds of Fripp's triumphant soaring keyboards end up making me love this performance very nearly as much as the original.

By the time the album ends, with "Starless" followed by a double encore of "'Heroes'" and "21st Century Schizoid Man," I'm very nearly as flattened as overcome by the memento this album provides as I am with the memory of the actual performance (this is undoubtedly my favorite concert I've ever attended and I can't imagine how it would be surpassed). I can't quite go the 'E' level with this in terms of grade, just because I'm not sure that anything from the end-stage version of the band should be rated as highly as the very best material from the band during its peak, but regardless, this is an amazing listen, and I recommend it highly to anybody who likes King Crimson.