What does it sound like?:
This double live set captures the full show from the final performance on the band’s recently completed and much delayed 2021 US tour. It’s also supplemented by four songs from an intimate ‘friends and family’ show that took place earlier in the tour. Despite the long lay off, the band are in fine ferocious form, playing as well as they’ve ever done, and as ever updating and reinterpreting their material to give it a new lease of life. Many old favourites appear of course – Larks Tongues, Epitaph, In The Court Of, Schizoid Man and Red to pick out just a few highlights. A special mention too for Tony Levin’s majestic bass playing which matches Fripp’s guitar throughout in terms of virtuosity and innovation, while the rhythmic backbone of the three drummers set up is as powerful and energising as ever. If I had to select one highpoint, it would be the combination of the two relatively new pieces Radical Action and Level Five that are the perfect precursor for a sublime Starless. Having said that, it’s actually probably matched by the scorching version of Discipline from the second show featured here, as good a version as I’ve heard over the years, and a peerless Islands that closes proceedings. Another superb live release – it may be classed as an official bootleg, but the sound quality is top drawer and really leaps out of the speakers, and the musicians’ performances themselves are up there with their absolute best – it’s very apparent that the enforced lengthy lay off has reinvigorated, reenergised and rejuvenated every aspect of the whole band.
What does it all *mean*?
A very worthwhile addition to the Crimson canon – fans will lap it up as it captures the most recent incarnation of the band in top form.
Goes well with…
Remembering the last UK shows and maybe hoping for one final set of appearances.
Release Date:
Out now.
Might suit people who like…
Cutting edge progressive music.
I agree about Tony Levin’s bass on this – he’s never played, or sounded better than this.
Now I’m interested. Levin fkin’ roolz.
Also Jeremy Stacey is even further off the leash than before, playing some truly out-there jazzy keyboards as well as driving the middle drum set like it’s a monster truck.
If you have even a tangential relationship with King Crimson, I’d recommend buying this set. My copy arrived about a week ago and I’ve given it many listens…it’s a beast!
It’s very good indeed, but not as good IMO as the triple Meltdown (Live In Mexico) set from 2018. A fair bit cheaper, though.
Agreed…
My final musical purchase of 2021, I fully expect this to be one of the best.
But the crucial question is:
Does it belong in Loders’ or Dai’s Best of thread?
It’s a live album from this year, not a comp of old material…and you could argue that there’s a significant amount of new music created this year, ie, improvisation.
Anyway, I put in the Lodey top 20 thread and it wasn’t given the big knock back. QED.
Good review. I truly think King Crimson will be valued in the future in a way the amusing hippie kitsch of symphonic progressive rock (which I’m a big fan of) won’t. Most ( progressive ) bands have an imperial phase of a handful of years, and decades of longeurs. King Crimson and marillion are about the only ones that have maintained quality beyond their opening sprint.
I think having extended breaks must help: Crimson notably after Red until 1981, then after …Perfect Pair. See also Van der Graaf – a two/three year gap in the early ‘70s, then a 27 year gap after 1978.
Compare with Yes or Genesis after 1980…no gaps, but nothing which catches fire like their work in the ‘70s
But Marillion? Really? I know they’re popular on the site and I’m asking for trouble…but shurely not in the same ballpark as King Crimson, imho…
I’ve continued to see the appeal of King Crimson throughout their different incarnations, but I never even got started with Marillion. Or with VDGG, actually.
It’s worth the effort for VdgG.
No it isn’t when the singer’s voice affects you like fingernails on a blackboard.
Sorry.
That’s my issue too. I bought several albums of theirs in a Graaf fug one day long ago. I really want(ed) to like them; great album titles, neat song titles, interesting album covers (some of them) and they have the technical chops as players. But.
Agreed. Too darkly mannered and never really hits that spot. Angsty occult skronk.
Amateurs! (Not you, Vincent, obviously…)
I’m afraid that’s what Adrian Belew’s voice does to me. I really can’t listen to anything he sings on. I think In The Court Of now sounds quite horribly dated and was always ruined by that wibbling extension of Moonchild.
The best vocalist by far was Gordon Haskell, although unfortunately he din’t get to sing the best songs. Red was the true classic and teh introduction of the American musos turned everything that followed (well nearly) into a soul-less racket, which was far too often based on the same chord changes. For me though there was one huge exception which stood out like a beacon above all the anonymous sterility of the rest: Coda: Marine 475 is their real post-Red masterpiece; its brilliance arising from the way that it lurches around the aural landscape like a wounded mammoth, seemingly played by deeply inebriated musicians, randomly screeching and pounding their way across a field full of dustbin lids. If Johnny Thunders and the Heartbreakers played prog rock it would probably have sounded like this. The closest KC ever came to making a (perverted) soul record.
Good point. Mazza are a different type of prog, really. That brings it down to KC and VdgG. Th best ones are often lightning in a bottle, re Hatfield and the North, early Beggar’s Opera, etc.
H & TN yes, ocassional puerility aside. Classic era Caravan would be my first choice.
A bit of mild Dada-ist humour is part of the deal with all the Canterbury bands, Caravan included…always a risk that it might come over as puerile, I suppose…
I know what you mean. Just a slightly raised eyebrow at a few of the HATN jobs (pun intended). Otherwise great music.
What’s wrong with puerility? I ask as a fan of 1970s and 80s Frank Zappa.
Puerility as a sales strategy.
Q: “How do I market my intricate and rather peculiar musical compositions in order to earn a living from them?”
A: “Write lyrics about peculiar sexual practices and the messier bodily functions and put them on top of the music. The sort of stuff that amuses white male rock fans. Perhaps put the occasional bit of serious political and social stuff in there as well, to see If they can be made to think a bit.”
It’s really only the ‘big jobs pooh pooh’ stuff that makes my eyes roll. Not so much puerile, as infantile. I have no probs with Frank and H&TN are a fine band indeed, to re-clarify.
Frunobulax the Giant Poodle rocks!
“Billy was a mountain.
Ethel was a tree growing off of his shoulder..”
Nobody’s heard anything Marillion have done since about 1987…
I saw them at Cropredy the last time I was there about five years ago and would be happy to never see (and most definitely hear) them again.
KC are one of the very few acts that really merit the ‘progressive’ epithet. Maybe the only one.
@chinstroker
Let’s not forget their more upbeat stuff with The Sunshine Band.
Never fails to brighten my day
Kevin Coyne? Not really my idea of sunshine songs …
Maybe ‘Sunday Morning Sunrise’?