King Crimson 23: Meltdown

The resurgence of King Crimson in the second decade of the 21st century is somewhat surprising, but Robert Fripp—who’s just as pleased about it as anyone—insists that it could only have happened when people’s preconceptions of what the band is and does are ignored. What he calls the ninth lineup of the band (and the fourth “Definitive Formation”) includes eight men, some already eligible to collect Social Security, whose dedication to the material and history of the band results in not only stellar performances greeted enthusiastically by audiences—some of whom are seeing the band for the first time—but the capability of performing music that was never quite able to make it from the studio to the stage.

Fripp has been releasing selected “official bootlegs” from throughout the band’s history, and the latest lineups have already been represented on several such CDs since 2014. Even after the comprehensive Radical Action To Unseat The Hold Of Monkey Mind, two further shows from 2017 were made available. Live In Vienna had Jeremy Stacey on drums in place of Bill Reiflin, who’d gone on sabbatical for what turned out to be terminal cancer. The third disc of the set was filled out by extra improvisations from elsewhere in the tour, and was held back for mass release until after that of Live In Chicago, which still had Stacey but also included Bill, back in the band on keyboards. (This two-disc set also included the otherwise unavailable song “The Errors”.) As good as that show seemed, somehow their Mexico City run a few weeks later managed to astound audience and band members alike, and that’s how Meltdown: Live In Mexico got the full-fledged pantheon treatment.

Unlike Radical Action, which shuffled various tracks and presented them without audience atmosphere, Meltdown delivers what mostly replicates an actual setlist in order, with crowd ambience included. We even get to hear some of the atmospherics from the top of the show, and Fripp’s pre-recorded welcome, admonishment not to use cell phones until the very end (“use your eyes to viddy and your ears to record”), and the hilarious exhortation “Let’s have a party!” The tuning-up snippet from the tail end of the Islands introduces “Larks’ Tongues In Aspic, Part One” and the show properly begins.

While many tunes are repeated from Radical Action, Meltdown is a different listening experience. Two pieces from the underappreciated Lizard are given new life: “Cirkus” and the “Battle Of Glass Tears” sequence from the title track—the latter suite a massive improvement from the studio take. Selections from the ‘80s incarnation of the band appear; “Indisicipline” is an incredible demonstration of the how the three drummers work with and off each other. “Level Five” is also presented on its way to its promotion to part five of the “Larks’ Tongues” suite, while a gorgeous rendition of “Islands” may well be the highlight of the set. (The band’s now-traditional cover of Bowie’s “‘Heroes’”—the original to which Fripp contributed that guitar part—sits right there betwixt “The Court Of The Crimson King” and “21st Century Schizoid Man”.)

Because of its song selection, overall sound, and continuity, Meltdown gets a slight edge over Radical Action. The three discs very much convey the idea of first set, second set, and encores; the third disc is bolstered by further live recordings from the summer of 2018, including some improvs and a blazing take on “Breathless” from Fripp’s first solo album. And those who wish to viddy with their eyes can pop in the included Blu-ray.

King Crimson Live In Chicago (2017)—3½
King Crimson Live In Vienna (2018)—3½
King Crimson Meltdown: Live In Mexico (2018)—3½

King Crimson 22: Radical Action

After another lengthy hiatus, and a period where the band’s figurehead stated twice that he was done with performing and touring like he used to, King Crimson became a concert act again in 2014. This incarnation swelled to seven members, three of whom were drummers and set up at the front of the stage. Alongside Robert Fripp, other veterans included stalwart bass and Stick player Tony Levin, drummer Pat Mastelotto, and most remarkably, the return of Mel Collins on sax for the first time since the Red album. Other members found their way in via various Crimson side projects and Fripp-approved tribute acts.

While the shows featured some new material, the setlists relied heavily on material from the “classic” period, now that there were enough people and technology available onstage to recreate those pieces. In keeping with Fripp’s view of concerts as “a hot date with King Crimson”, each was recorded for posterity, and some were issued to the public. Live At The Orpheum presented 41 minutes distilled from two LA shows on that first brief tour, while Live In Toronto was an “official bootleg” of a full show a year later.

The scope of what this incarnation was able to accomplish can be experienced on Radical Action To Unseat The Hold Of Monkey Mind, a three-CD set available with a Blu-ray, and also a version that adds two DVDs. (The audience response is mixed out of the audio, but is discernable on the video.) While it purports to include a version of every song played on the tour, the discs are reorganized into distinct thematic sets. “Mainly Metal” and “Easy Money Shots” go through well executed tracks from the ‘90s-and-later lineups, as well as material that hadn’t been played live since the early ‘70s, with selections from In The Wake Of Poseidon and Islands. “Crimson Classics” features their “greatest hits” from the debut and Red, but that’s not to suggest it’s the go-to, especially since stuff from Larks’ Tongues In Aspic is on the first two.

In addition to the enhanced yet reverent arrangements (“Baby Elephant Walk”, anyone?) there is some “new” music here. The title suite is archetypical Crimson, with angular arpeggios over odd time signatures and Fripp fuzz, part one and part two framing a vocal section called “Meltdown”. And while it does have the word in the title and swaggers along, “Suitable Grounds For The Blues” isn’t about to be covered by Buddy Guy anytime soon. Tony Levin is forward in the mix here, as he is on the “Interlude” that follows. Second guitarist Jakko Jakszyk is also the lead vocalist, and while his polished approach sounds startling on the newer, less familiar tracks and certainly competent on the old favorites, one must remember that Fripp was a big fan of Daryl Hall. Each disc also includes a distinct piece for percussion, proving just how tight a dozen limbs could be.

Despite being both pricey and sprawling, Radical Action... is still a good entry into the world of King Crimson, covering a lot of ground and leaving only the ‘80s stage of the band unrepresented. Come to think of it, most Crimson releases lean on the expensive side, but you also get a lot of content for your dollar. And yes, the guy on the cover is pretty disturbing.

King Crimson Live At The Orpheum (2015)—3
King Crimson Live In Toronto (2016)—3½
King Crimson Radical Action To Unseat The Hold Of Monkey Mind (2016)—3½

King Crimson 21: A Scarcity Of Miracles

Despite being subtitled “A King Crimson ProjeKct”, A Scarcity Of Miracles should not be mistaken for a 21st century Crimson album. Rather, it was built up from a collaboration between Robert Fripp and one Jakko Jakszyk, who’d fronted a group of reunited Crimson alumni, including Mel Collins, who added some saxophone parts to the works in progress. Tony Levin and Porcupine Tree drummer Gavin Harrison (who’d played with Crimson in 2008) added a rhythm section and that was the album.

Most of the pieces are on the long side, with melancholy melodies and soundscape-style atmospheres. Each track has a vocal and lyrics, and Jakko harmonizes with himself. In this and other ways it’s similar to Fripp’s collaboration with David Sylvian, not as dance-heavy, but still rhythmic in places. Collins is prominent, but guitars provide the main structures, in different styles and electricity; a Chinese zither features occasionally. Some familiar-sounding riffs appear before the higher-energy segment of “The Other Man”, which is the most frenetic and welcome portion of the album. (Those who bought the DVD package got alternate mixes of the album’s tracks, as well as two improvs, which would eventually be offered for download.)

While more historic for what was to follow for the principals—and the appearance of two of the songs in future setlists—A Scarcity Of Miracles remains mostly a curio, not astounding, but not awful. It chronicles a new beginning for these principals. And because of said principals, it’s catalogued here thusly.

Jakszyk, Fripp and Collins A Scarcity Of Miracles (2011)—3

King Crimson 20: The Power To Believe

Despite most people’s expectations, King Crimson actually surfaced in the 21st century. The Power To Believe retained the same quartet from the previous album, and is something of a piece, with its intricate fake-delay guitars and electronically enhanced percussion. There seems to be less emphasis on upfront vocals, which is fine.

The title track is split into three parts plus coda throughout the album. The first part is a cappella, a processed vocalizing that recurs throughout; the second seems to have several other sections within it; the third supports a lengthy slow Fripp solo; and the coda is almost Enoesque (until the vocals come in). “Level Five” is textbook Crimson, pounding a non-standard time signature into submission with staccato emphasis a la the “Larks’ Tongues” series (in which it would one day be officially incorporated as “Part Five”); similarly “EleKtriK” should be pleasing to shredheads. If there’s a radio-friendly single on the album, it’s “Eyes Wide Open”, but even that might be considered too light for the band and the prog genre overall. “Facts Of Life” has a long, dull intro (indexed separately) and lyrics that think too much, but an experiment that works once you figure out the point is “Happy With What You Have To Be Happy With”, a skewering of the nu-metal scene and how their songs are constructed (“I guess I’ll repeat the chorus/we’re gonna repeat the chorus”). “Dangerous Curves” builds in the style of “The Devil’s Triangle”, and overall the album seems to hearkening back to the Crimson of the early ‘70s.

Something of a preview (a la VROOOM for Thrak) appeared in the form of Happy With What You Have To Be Happy With. Three new songs-with-vocals are linked by short, processed a cappella pieces and instrumentals. A ten-minute live version of “Larks’ Tongues In Aspic (Part IV)” is pretty cool, and the set ends with a collage of snippets from the studio, some humorous. The one song that didn’t appear on the album proper was “Potato Pie”, which extended some of the “blues” experiments of the last album. Also available at shows before given wider release directly from the band was the Level Five EP, highlighting five mostly instrumentals (and one hidden track, all with boomy mixes) from their brief stint opening up for Tool, some of which would be developed for The Power To Believe. A further souvenir appeared as EleKtriK, recorded at the Tokyo stop of that year’s tour. It actually consisted of most of the audio portion of the first disc of the Eyes Wide Open DVD package, which is more comprehensive, and therefore a better representation of the so-called Double Duo’s capabilities. (All three of these audio extras have since been rereleased by Discipline Global Mobile in a single package.)

History has shown that nothing is set in stone, but for many years, this was the last King Crimson album, Fripp having semi-retired but still authorizing archival releases and fighting for the rights of the musician. At this stage he had left a legacy that remains challenging, inspiring, unpredictable and, for those who have made the plunge, highly rewarding.

King Crimson Level Five (2001)—3
King Crimson Happy With What You Have To Be Happy With (2002)—2½
King Crimson The Power To Believe (2003)—3
King Crimson EleKtriK (2003)—3

King Crimson 19: The ConstruKction Of Light

By the end of the century, King Crimson had evolved yet again. The “double trio” of Thrak was back down to a quartet along the lines of the ‘80s version of the band, with Adrian Belew on vocals and other guitar, Trey Gunn on the bass equivalent and Pat Mastelotto on predominantly electronic drums. The nature of that percussion pervades throughout The ConstruKction Of Light (the title being something of a nod to the interim “ProjeKcts” Fripp had encouraged among the double trio members, and the extra letter changing anything it can to “Kc”—cute, huh?). Unless we’re mistaken, and that’s not an impossibility, there’s no Mellotron to be heard anywhere.

The first track, “ProzaKc Blues”, has an excellent groove (and, as Crimheads like to point out, a standard chord progression) but it’s almost immediately undermined by a heavily processed vocal brought down about three octaves for comedic effect. While it’s nice to see that Fripp has a sense of humor—there’s even a nod to the longtime online mailing list dedicated to the band and their offshoots—what could have been a great opener instead dares the listener to continue. The title track is a big improvement. Split into two parts, intricate guitars answer each other in opposite speakers, and when the vocals enter in the second half, it’s more like the sound we’d normally associate with the Belew period. An appropriately sizzling effect starts off “Into The Frying Pan”, and there’s something about the wobbly vocals and guitars that sounds like psychedelic Beatles. Speaking of which, “The World’s My Oyster Soup Kitchen Floor Wax Museum” follows the type of free-association exercise that John Lennon indulged in during his househusband years—with some nods to the ilk of “Subterranean Homesick Blues”—with less than hilarious results. (Do you really want to hear the phrase “get jiggy with it” on a Crimson album?) While there’s no credit for keyboards, the last minute or so is dominated by an anarchic piano solo.

Belew’s lyrics being hit or miss, it’s more tempting to concentrate on the instrumental segments, which are lengthy. “FraKctured” is something of an update of the closing track from Starless And Bible Black, alternating extremely precise and urgent soloing with less edgy bridges. Even more provocative is “Larks’ Tongues In Aspic Part IV”, picking up the mantle of the title last revisited in 1984. Here the familiar stabbing theme is played with the aggression of Thrak. Indexed as three sections on your CD player, it segues neatly into “Coda: I Have A Dream” a la a similar postscript to “VROOOM”. The guitar is a little more mainstream, but the lyric little more than an update of “We Didn’t Start The Fire” with a sadder melody. (As a bonus/advertisement, “Heaven And Earth” is a glimpse into ProjeKct X, and the title track of an album excerpted from rehearsals and featuring the players on the album using a different approach. We’re guessing the title refers to the framing of the synth strings around the more aggressive middle.)

The ConstruKction Of Light didn’t kick down any doors, but still offered proof that Fripp hadn’t lost any of his edge over the years. If anything, the side projects, solo improv performances and vault explorations spurred him to always find something new. If you have everything else up to this point, it’s a worthy addition, but it’s not the place to start.

Two decades later, as part of the massive Heaven & Earth box set covering the band’s musical output in the early ‘00s (including that of various ProjeKcts), the album wasn’t just remastered and remixed, but rerecorded, as many of the digital masters had gone missing. Pat Mastelotto took the opportunity to redo his drum parts on a predominantly acoustic kit in place of many of the electronic parts on the original album. As a result, The ReconstruKction Of Light is that much more organic a listen, and a little less than two minutes longer. A cheaper option to hear the music in a more natural environment is Heavy ConstruKction, three discs of recordings from the band’s European tour supporting the album, one of which contains nothing but improvisations, two of those interrupted by the band stopping because audience members were taking flash photographs after being told not to.

King Crimson The ConstruKction Of Light (2000)—3
King Crimson Heavy ConstruKction (2000)—3

King Crimson 18: Absent Lovers

Having already looked at both ends of the ‘70s version of the band, the next archival release from King Crimson covered the ‘80s version. Absent Lovers presents the final show of the tour supporting Three Of A Perfect Pair, which was also the last time these four musicians would play together for ten years. The show was originally recorded for radio broadcast, and promptly bootlegged, and while this official version is mixed from the original multitracks, some odd fades suggest that a boot might have been the source.

It’s no big deal, because the recording is crisp. After three albums and tours in this incarnation, they had the set pretty much down. After a lengthy introductory improv titled “Entry Of The Crims”, the disparate pieces come together into “Larks’ Tongues In Aspic Part III”, and off they go. As the vocalist, Adrian Belew takes the opportunity to engage the crowd in between songs, and his vocals are still a matter of personal taste. He even takes time at the end to individually acknowledge everyone on the tour crew. Outside of excellent versions of “Red” and “Larks’ Tongues In Aspic Part II” (both of which originally recorded in the ‘70s, so Bill Bruford gets to show how well he remembered them), the set leans heaviest on what was the new album and Discipline, with a few things from Beat, shuffling the pile and juxtaposing more familiar (read: better) songs with ones we overlooked.

And that right there is what makes the album worth it. While the three ‘80s albums sound very cold—partially because of the emphasis on electronics—onstage the pieces have a lot more room to breathe, which Robert Fripp insists is always better anyway. (He has even more to say, about prog and the music industry in general, in the booklet.)

Absent Lovers is a highly recommended introduction to that version of King Crimson, shedding some light onto that section of the catalog and the history. If one really wants to immerse oneself into the era, the On (And Off) The Road box set presents eleven CDs containing remastered versions of the three albums (with bonus tracks), live recordings, and outtakes, as well as Absent Lovers, along with DVDs and Blu-rays loaded with surround mixes and video content. For a smaller sampler, Sheltering Skies presented a 1982 show (from a French date in support of Roxy Music) that had already been released on VHS and DVD. Unique to this set are “Neal And Jack And Me” and “The Sheltering Sky”, plus another version of the latter from a show the day before. Be warned: Adrian Belew does a lot more mugging here.

King Crimson Absent Lovers—Live In Montreal 1984 (1998)—3½
King Crimson Sheltering Skies (2024)—3

King Crimson 17: Epitaph

Robert Fripp is easily King Crimson’s biggest fan. Long insistent that they’re not “his” band, he has consistently championed the contributions of every player who traveled under that name, and, in the wake of years of mismanagement and exploitation by the record industry, he has spent much of his spare time preserving, archiving and sharing every document of the band (and his own history) that he can find.

Fripp was the first major artist to set up a Web-based distribution system for his product, a move that has been both welcomed and criticized by rabid fans (a term, he will happily remind you, is short for “fanatic”, and he’s nothing if not precise). Several compilations and box sets had already appeared, but the first major release in the era of the Bootleg Series and Dick’s Picks was Epitaph, which served to document the live adventures of the unit that recorded the first King Crimson album.

Most Crimheads give high praise to In The Court Of The Crimson King; however, that band splintered at the conclusion of their first American tour, and the follow-up suffered as a result. Epitaph documents their concerts, from their earliest BBC radio recordings to performances at Fillmores East and West. The performances are presented as is yet show the band at its best, between faithful reproductions of songs from the album and extended improvisations, two of which would be recorded for In The Wake Of Poseidon. Other experiments would inspire KC songs even further down the line, though we note that parts of “Mantra”, otherwise unfinished, are reminiscent of one of the pieces from Keith Jarrett’s Köln Concert. Throughout, they sound less prog than jazz.

A two-disc version of Epitaph was sold in stores, while the most rabid fans could send away for two further discs for the set, both taken from bootlegs and described by the compilers as “wretched”, thus explaining the existence of the two-disc version. (Indeed, the inaugural release a year later from the King Crimson Collector’s Club documented a set from their summer residency at London’s Marquee Club, and while it’s fascinating for its power and volume, its audio quality is atrocious.) Since the set’s release further recordings have come to light, and have been made available as CDs and/or downloads from the official site, culminating in 2019’s The Complete 1969 Recordings, containing 20 CDs of live material, recording sessions, and multiple mixes of the first album, plus four Blu-Rays and two DVDs.

Bolstered later in the year by The Nightwatch, these albums are mostly designed for those seeking a wider picture than those offered by the band’s studio discography, and are not intended to act as replacements. Along with the moments of musical superiority, each are heavily annotated by the participants, and exhaustively by Mr. Fripp, who uses the forum to put forth various of his learned aphorisms, including “The history of the music industry is a history of exploitation and theft” and “Tuning a Mellotron doesn’t.”

King Crimson Epitaph (1997)—3

King Crimson 16: Thrak

The digital era gave Robert Fripp another reason to assess the legacy of King Crimson, resulting in remasters of the catalog and some archival digs in box set form. But the big news arrived in 1994, with the announcement of yet another lineup performing as King Crimson. This time the ‘80s combo, featuring Adrian Belew, Tony Levin, and Bill Bruford—each of whom had kept very busy in the meantime—was augmented by drummer Pat Mastelotto and Chapman Stick player Trey Gunn, both of whom had most recently toured with Fripp and David Sylvian. This “double trio” format managed to contain enough elements of each previous incarnation of the band to earn the right to use the moniker.

The new album was preceded by a self-produced EP, which would recur down the line, and also confirm Fripp’s belief that the least label interference was best for him. VROOOM (yes, rendered in all caps) is mostly a first draft, teasing listeners with the potential of the band as they jam towards a result. (A further glimpse into the rehearsal stage would be provided in four years via the eighth volume of the King Crimson Collectors’ Club.)

Thrak (also occasionally given the all-cap treatment but we don’t want to) is a much more polished and better balanced program, building on the foundation of VROOOM. It begins the same way, with a quiet rumble and crashing in on the pounding theme of “VROOOM”, beginning with a melody right out of Red and pausing for a few fingerpickings. The second half of the track is now “Coda: Marina 475” ever descending to its end. The glorious sound of Mellotron strings heralds “Dinosaur”, the first vocal appearance of Adrian (and a very Lennonesque one at that) and a terrifically catchy should-have-been-a-hit. The Mellotron reappears halfway through in a suggestion of Barber’s “Adagio For Strings”, setting up a false ending before the chorus reappears. “Walking On Air” is another radio-friendly tune, with a lovely backwards-sounding solo. “B’Boom” is mostly a drums solo leading into the title track, another insistent riff.

The second half of the album is more vocal-oriented: the two halves of “Inner Garden”, the driving funk of “People” (which really takes off in the last couple of minutes’ solo), the slinky “One Time”, and the Peter Gabriel-ish “Sex Sleep Eat Drink Dream”. “VROOOM VROOOM” and its coda provide more variations on the opening salvo, bringing things nicely full circle.

By tempering Adrian’s voice (or piling more sound around him) the ‘90s Crimson seems to rock more than ever, pretty much picking up where the band left off in the ‘70s, without relying so much on the electronics of the ‘80s. They certainly sounded like they were having fun, and now that they had the technology, many of the concerts performed by the double trio would become available for purchase directly from Fripp’s website, while a few would get wider release. B’Boom documents a show in Buenos Aires that occurred just before the Thrak album proper was recorded, and rush-released to thwart bootleggers, while VROOOM VROOOM provides performances from each end of the lengthy tour to promote the final product, all without a lot of overlap. (THRaKaTTaK is basically a bunch of improv experiments from various shows, chopped and mixed Zappa-style, and for obsessives only.)

For even more fun, a box set devoted to the lifespan of the double trio contains 12 CDs, two DVDs, and two Blu-rays, presenting just about everything they recorded in the studio and several things captured onstage over the space of four years or so. Meanwhile, the 40th Anniversary Edition of the album stuck with the album as released, but piled various mixes onto the DVD.

King Crimson VROOOM (1994)—3
King Crimson Thrak (1995)—4
King Crimson B’Boom (1995)—3½
King Crimson VROOOM VROOOM (2001)—3

Robert Fripp 6: The Next Day

David Sylvian was best known as the dreamy frontman for the New Wave band Japan; he became better acquainted with Robert Fripp after doing a session together in 1985. At the turn of the ‘90s, Fripp had toyed with the idea of another incarnation of King Crimson, with Sylvian as lead singer. While that didn’t happen, the two did manage to complete a collaborative tour, which resulted in an album.

The Next Day is very much a collaboration, dominated by Sylvian’s croon, over loops as well as real drums and percussion, with Fripp mostly adding color on the side when he’s not driving the riff. Another key contributor is Trey Gunn, who’d graduated from Crafty Guitarist to proficient Chapman Stick player and had joined the duo on the initial tour. Veteran drummer Jerry Marotta is also on a few tracks, along with computer treatments from co-producer David Botrill.

The album begins with the funky (always a strange word to associate with Fripp) “God’s Monkey”. But for the experiments in meter, this is fairly mainstream, as is “Jean The Birdman” with its dense lyrics. “Firepower” brings in a lot more crunch, and sports more familiar Fripp soloing that livens up the second half of this ten-minute track. (Plus, what sounds like a violin evokes echoes of the Larks’ Tongues era.) Another snaky riff drives “Brightness Falls”, which is just too slow to be danceable.

The second half of the album is a little more indulgent, if frankly tedious. “20th Century Dreaming (A Shaman’s Song)” has promise at first, but soon devolves into ambient effects while the bassline burbles beneath. Not so for “Darshan (Road To Graceland)”, which explores the era’s ubiquitous “Manchester beat” loop for about 17 minutes. It picks up anytime Sylvian sings an actual verse or Fripp’s guitar comes up in the mix, but takes up a lot of space without really going anywhere, despite the title. If anything, it makes the Frippertronic soundscape of “Bringing Down The Light” more welcome.

To support the album, the duo plus Gunn recruited “infinite guitarist” Michael Brook and Pat Mastelotto, most famous for pounding the skins for Mr. Mister, for another brief tour. The shows at the Royal Albert Hall were released as a limited edition CD called Damage, which Sylvian remixed and resequenced in 2001 for a more widespread release. The first version gets points for beginning with the moody title track, while the second adds “Jean The Birdman” at the expense of “Darshan”, which also cuts six minutes from the total disc time. Both versions provide better performances of the album’s tunes, plus a few selections from Sylvian’s solo albums as well as a song from Rain Tree Crow, the eponymous Japan reunion from 1991. In both cases, the albums end with two more rare songs: the rocking outtake “Blinding Light Of Heaven” and the much more subdued “The Next Day”. (Completists will also want to seek out the two CD singles for “Jean The Birdman”, which include more subdued Sylvian tracks with Frippertronics, and the “Darshan” maxi-single with two commissioned remixes of the song that are actually shorter than the album track.)

Though the pair wouldn’t take their collaboration further, the rhythm section would continue to be useful for Fripp. And while The Next Day and particularly Damage very much foreshadowed his next adventure, that future would be very different indeed had Sylvian accepted the challenge of singing in King Crimson.

David Sylvian & Robert Fripp The Next Day (1993)—2½
Sylvian/Fripp Damage (1994)—3

King Crimson 15: The Great Deceiver

While it covered all the lineups King Crimson sported over the years, the Frame By Frame box set stuck mainly to album tracks, with the one disc of live material limited to three of those incarnations. The era of the band that begun with the Larks’ Tongues In Aspic album was particularly revered by both audiences and Robert Fripp himself, so he took the opportunity to curate another box set, this time devoted to that quartet. The Great Deceiver highlights six shows, some complete, throughout four discs. While the repertoire is similar, we get to hear just how differently Fripp, John Wetton, David Cross, and Bill Bruford approached each performance. Fripp makes no apology for including four versions of “Easy Money”, though it is something to experience two different audiences hearing “Starless” for the first time—and with violin.

The first disc presents the penultimate gig by the band, completed at the start of disc two. (Even the “Walk On” and “Walk Off” music from (No Pussyfooting) is included for posterity.) This show was the source of “Providence” on Red, presented unedited here, and “21st Century Schizoid Man” on USA, where it was overdubbed. In those days Fripp would actually engage the crowd with announcements, and here his introduction of a well-received improvisation called “A Voyage To The Centre Of The Cosmos” is peppered with his own chuckles.

The bulk of the second disc comes from nine months earlier in Glasgow, and includes the full improv that would be edited and titled “We’ll Let You Know” on Starless And Bible Black. Here the opening jam before “Larks’ Tongues Part One” is called “Sharks’ Lungs In Lemsip”; another improv gets the title “Tight Scrummy” and is built around an almost comically prominent rhythm machine. A surprising encore arrives with Fripp strumming “Peace: A Theme” before the band goes into “Cat Food”. Ten minutes of material from a later show at Penn State fill up the disc, and stay tuned for a hidden track wherein Fripp signals engineer George Chkiantz to change tapes.

Disc three is devoted to a show from Pittsburgh with a rowdy audience. Here the “Walk On” music is smacked away by a furious “Great Deceiver”, but having to tune the Mellotrons quiets the proceedings down quickly into one improv. “Exiles” builds the tension, but Fripp follows that with a pretty piece for guitar and violin dubbed “Daniel Dust”. Things pick up for “Doctor Diamond”, a mushmouthed original that never really gelled. An improv called “Wilton Carpet” moves into “The Talking Drum” and then an “abbreviated” “Larks’ Tongues Part Two”. (Another fourteen minutes from Penn State end the disc, consisting of another announcement from Fripp asking “Is there life out there?”, whence the following improv gets its title; another hidden track demonstrates further onstage tuning of two Mellotrons.)

Disc four opens in Toronto with a furious (there’s that word again) piece called “The Golden Walnut”, which sports a riff one day better knows as “One More Red Nightmare”, and eventually dwindles to silence. After “The Night Watch” and “Fracture” comes another improv, cheekily dubbed “Clueless And Slightly Slack”, and a phrase used throughout the booklet. From there we go a Zurich show for plenty of improvisation, one of which is called “The Law Of Maximum Distress” and split into two parts due to a missing tape. As it turns out, that missing piece had been chopped out of the master back in 1973 to be overdubbed as “The Mincer” on Starless And Bible Black. Further dying Mellotron fuels the prelude to “The Talking Drum”, which ends abruptly, along with the entire set.

Once again design was treated with the same respect as the music, from individually unique disc titles and artwork to the comprehensive booklet that incorporated vintage Fripp diary entries from the period, which chronicle the eventual demise of the quartet whilst on the road. He also took the opportunity to expound on further corruption in the music industry, as was his wont, since his previous notes. There is some commentary from the other principals, but most space is given over to a continuation of the press clippings excerpted in the previous box—namely reviews, both positive and negative, of Frame By Frame. (In this century the set was reissued as separate two-disc sets with simpler packaging than the original box.)

Five years later, another important archival piece arrived in the form of The Nightwatch. This two-disc set presents the bulk of the Amsterdam concert that provided the bulk of Starless And Bible Black. Expanding on the background provided in the Great Deceiver booklet, the copious liner notes explain the conditions under which this particular show came to be, and how miserable the band members were at this point of the tour. The result is a portrait of a band pulling excellence out of despair. The audience enjoyed themselves.

Much of the material from this era would one day be parceled out as direct downloads, and in the Starless and Road To Red mega-box sets. These discs provide gradual steps into that well.

King Crimson The Great Deceiver: Live 1973-1974 (1992)—3
King Crimson The Nightwatch (1997)—3½

King Crimson 14: Frame By Frame

Even having explored new music and new ways of creating and performing it, Robert Fripp’s old band would not be forgotten. So when the EG label began the process of reissuing King Crimson albums on compact disc, he was determined to be involved; hence, the ten studio albums were emblazoned with copy proclaiming each “THE DEFINITIVE EDITION”.

This is not the place to detail EG’s business difficulties, but before long the catalog had shifted to the Virgin label, and apparently the folks writing the checks felt the band deserved a box set. Using a programming method that would recur through the years and with advances in technology, Frame By Frame presented what Fripp and a subtitle deemed The Essential King Crimson, covering the three main periods of the band. The set is a good introduction for new comers, with packaging that garnered design awards and an exhaustively detailed booklet that updated the insert in A Young Person’s Guide To King Crimson, presenting a chronology of the band in all incarnations, including excerpts from reviews good and bad, plus the occasional rebuttal from Fripp.

The first disc covers the first four albums and three years, beginning with the entirety of In The Court Of The Crimson King, leaving out only the meandering portion of “Moonchild”, just as on Young Person’s Guide. As there, the single version of “Cat Food” is followed by the “Groon” B-side, while “Cadence And Cascade” now sports a lead vocal freshly recorded by Adrian Belew. Similarly, “Bolero” (the only track representing Lizard) has its bass part newly replaced by Tony Levin. Two tracks from Islands are supported by the coda from that album’s title track, as it had fallen off the previous year’s CD.

The second disc attempts to digest the three albums from the John Wetton/Bill Bruford era. Unfortunately, to accomplish this a few minutes were shaved from “Larks’ Tongues In Aspic (Part I)” and “Fracture”, while an abridgement of “Starless” fades the song just before the middle section in 13/4 and 13/8, and parks it before “Red”—a very jarring experience for those familiar with the album. The third disc samples the three ‘80s albums, mostly straight, but leaning heaviest on Discipline, its selections bookending the others. For an extra bonus, “The King Crimson Barber Shop”, created and performed a cappella by Tony Levin, closes the disc.

Boldly, the fourth disc is solely dedicated to live recordings through the years, split between the more popular lineups. Many of these recordings would be expanded upon and reissued via the King Crimson Collectors’ Club, which would begin towards the end of the century, but for now rarities like “Get Thy Bearings” and “Travel Weary Capricorn” showed off the power of the 1969 band. “The Talking Drum” and “21st Century Schizoid Man” were further samples from the show that begat part of Starless And Bible Black, while “Asbury Park” was the first time anything from USA appeared on CD. The ‘80s lineup gets the shortest shrift, and shortest tracks, and ends the set with something of a thud.

At the time, the set was extremely well received, given that it presented a smart mix of key tracks and rarities. As the catalog would continue to be tweaked as new technologies to improve sound appeared, and various anniversaries mined the evolution of each album, the set has since been surpassed by further excavations and presentations.

King Crimson Frame By Frame: The Essential King Crimson (1991)—3½

Andy Summers and Robert Fripp: I Advance Masked and Bewitched

At first it sounded like an odd match—the guitarist for a popular mainstream band facing off against the same for one of rock’s most challenging—but taken down to the basic details, it makes sense that Andy Summers and Robert Fripp would be so compatible. There were enough precedents in both the Police and King Crimson to show their similarities, and tendencies to create textures and spit out staccato solos. (They’re about the same age, too, Andy the older by three years. He’d also played in a whole slew of esoteric outfits before the Police got him.)

I Advance Masked is a true duet, each track compositionally credited to both, playing alternately dizzying runs up and down necks and exploring the capabilities of the guitar synthesizer. Being entirely instrumental, the titles suggest various moods, sometimes beautifully, as with “Girl On A Swing”, where a gentle piano dances around an acoustic guitar while a birdlike melody soars back and forth. “Painting And Dance” presents a nice little chamber piece, and tracks like “Under Bridges Of Silence”, “The Truth Of Skies”, and “In The Cloud Forest” contain enough Frippertronics to create moods. There are enough uptempo pieces to keep it from being entirely impressionistic; the title track (which builds on “The Zero Of The Signified” from Under Heavy Manners and shares some constructive elements with “Neurotica” from Beat) is particularly edgy, a tension that continues on the percussive “New Marimba”. “Hardy Country” also provides a change in dynamic, just as “Stultified” ends the album with a set of precisely played dissonant figures.

While not a smash hit, and little promotion considering their commitments to their main bands, a follow-up still materialized. Bewitched isn’t simply more of the same, mostly because it’s more of a Summers album than a full collaboration with Fripp, as the writing credits make plain. The album was split between a “dance” side, which adds a real rhythm section, albeit with electronic-sounding drums but also Sara Lee from the League Of Gentlemen on bass, and a “dream” side, which is much more contemplative as well as satisfying. Once again the titles try to be descriptive (“Begin The Day”, “Parade”, “Forgotten Steps”, “Train”, the title track), and while “What Kind Of Man Reads Playboy” is upbeat, reminiscent of Fripp’s “discotronics” period, at ten minutes it tends to drag. When the album works best, the notion of Brian Eno mixing an ECM album isn’t so alien.

Having limited themselves to two albums, a 90-minute Maxell conveniently contains both nicely, and even worth having on continual auto-reverse. If Police fans found their way here, they could well have graduated to King Crimson via a back door. More directly, the albums give the listener a chance to hear Fripp’s current style unadorned by the Levin/Bruford rhythm section, nor particularly Adrian Belew. They also raise Andy’s profile a bit, giving him a chance to step out of Sting’s shadow.

Forty years later, while Fripp was methodically and painstakingly upgrading and reissuing his life’s work, the Summers and Fripp albums hovered on the perimeter. Then Andy found a bunch of tapes that had been forgotten, enabling the compilers of The Complete Recordings 1981-1984 to present both albums in new mixes by David Singleton. The differences are subtle; the piano on “Girl On A Swing” is more pronounced, while “Parade” has some chatter under the intro and comes to a complete ending instead of being faded. Each of the albums got bonus tracks—alternate mixes mostly, plus the furious tracks “Brainstorm II” and the dreamier “Balinese”—as well as another disc’s worth of outtakes. Mother Hold The Candle Steady was compiled from sketches of ideas for both albums into finished compositions, plus alternate takes of “Parade” and “Maquillage”. Some of these new tricks are very nice, but then there’s the wacky carnival atmosphere of “Foi Um Optimo Dia”, complete with a chorus of happy revelers. The title track shares its name with that of an improvisation on Crimson live album), and “Step N’ Fetchit” is a remake of an Exposure outtake. Rounding out the disc is a half-hour of excerpts from Fripp’s cassettes of their writing sessions and conversations under the title “Can We Record Tony?” (The full “audio documentary” is included on a Blu-ray disc, along with original, new, and surround mixes of the three albums.)

Andy Summers/Robert Fripp I Advance Masked (1982)—4
Andy Summers/Robert Fripp Bewitched (1984)—3
Andy Summers and Robert Fripp The Complete Recordings 1981-1984 (2025)—3½

King Crimson 13: Three Of A Perfect Pair

The ‘80s version of King Crimson knew their audience. Guys raised on prog probably spent their non-musical attention reading sci-fi and fantasy novels, usually presented by the authors as trilogies. Three Of A Perfect Pair closes the book, so to speak, on this version of the group, which disbanded once the tour was over. Even the title seems to provide something of a conclusion.

Musically, the band was very much an anachronism; Yes, Genesis and the Moody Blues had retooled their approaches to cover more pop and grasp at success on the Top 40 chart. The title track, despite its wacky meter, almost comes off as a pop song, with a willfully perverse synth guitar solo that sounds like someone trying to figure out his effects pedals while playing it. “Model Man” and “Man With An Open Heart” have enough elements to keep them contemporary as well, but both are just too unsettling to be effective. Built around Tony Levin’s tapped bass, “Sleepless” is an improvement and the best song on the album, if not this version of the band. Because Adrian Belew’s vocal dominates the songs with lyrics, it can be said that this doesn’t really sound like a Crimson (read: Fripp) album until “Nuages (That Which Passes, Passes Like Clouds)” and its layered guitars.

On the CD, without the separation of side one (the “Left Side”) and side two (the “Right Side”), it’s a seamless transition to “Industry”, with even more synth guitar exploration. In the mode of similar tracks on the “trilogy”, it escalates into tense chaos without ever losing track of the rigid beat. “Dig Me” is very jagged and challenging, stopping twice for a simple exhilarating “chorus” over major chords. “No Warning” is another ominous instrumental along the lines of “Industry” and again, unsettling. Daringly, the album ends with “Larks’ Tongues In Aspic Part III”, which provides not only a suggested bridge to the mid-‘70s version of the band (two prior to this) but provides a finale for this lineup. As others have noted, the track fades before its resolution is revealed, an oddity in the catalog.

It’s probably a matter of taste, but considering Bill Bruford’s skill on acoustic percussion, his reliance on electronic drums here diminishes his contribution somewhat. Of the three albums by this lineup, Three Of A Perfect Pair places just below Discipline but above Beat. They should probably all be heard together as a set, but as they weren’t composed that way, that would explain why they remain separate entities. While we’re still more partial to the first album and Red, these have their moments and are certainly not wastes of plastic.

The first expansion of the album included a section called “The Other Side”, beginning with the wonderful all-Tony a cappella piece “The King Crimson Barber Shop”, which must be heard to be believed, along with two jams and three different remixes of “Sleepless” that scream mid-‘80s. The next version fiften years later relegated the remixes to the DVD, but added another jam and two more outtakes; even more was included in the multimedia On (And Off) The Road box set, capping the period decisively.

King Crimson Three Of A Perfect Pair (1984)—3
2001 30th Anniversary Edition: same as 1984, plus 6 extra tracks
2016 40th Anniversary Edition: same as 1984, plus 6 extra tracks (plus DVD)

King Crimson 12: Beat

Less than a year after their official return, King Crimson was back. Again. Beat follows much of the framework of Discipline—similar typeface, same four guys, minimal artwork. The album was intended as a nod to the Beat generation, but that’s only suggested in the lyrics and song titles; the music itself is post-modern with New Wave influences.

“Neal And Jack And Me” makes direct reference to the people behind On The Road. “Heartbeat” barely sounds like Fripp’s involved at all, being a mellow pop song that seems to foretell the construction of “Janie’s Got A Gun”. “Sartori In Tangier” is instrumental, beginning with a moody Chapman stick part and continuing with a nice Arabic groove. “Waiting Man” provides a couple of verses as a frame for an extended Fripp solo, which keeps it from being a Talking Heads track.

Finally there’s a blast of Crimson chaos on “Neurotica”, Bruford exploding all over his kit while the frets get pounded. A suitably nervous vocal babbles until the observer gets a chance to take things in, with the music calming down beside him. “Two Hands” is slow and pretty, likely a Belew composition with Fripp adding the solos, and most of the percussion seeming to come from bongos. “The Howler” fades in, constantly off-kilter musically and rhythmically, and it can’t help but suggest the Allen Ginsburg poem of similar name. “Requiem” would appear to be all Fripp—an organ plays a minor triad in back while he solos on top, Frippertronics-style—until the drums come in and the other guys can be heard pushing him along, and the scene gets uglier by the second, eventually ending on Tony Levin’s bass.

With what seems like more of an emphasis on accessibility, Beat doesn’t quite succeed. Adrian Belew’s a little more restrained vocally on this album, but overall it fails to capture one’s attention. Of course, when it does, it sounds like nothing else. (The eventual expansion nearly doubled the length of “Requiem” with even more Frippertronics, and added a bonus in the way of “Absent Lovers”, an instrumental outtake from the album sessions. The same year further additions were featured in the On (And Off) The Road box set.)

King Crimson Beat (1982)—2½
2016 40th Anniversary Edition: “same” as 1982, plus 1 extra track (plus DVD)

King Crimson 11: Discipline

The ‘80s actually did bring a lot of changes to music, which weren’t immediately apparent at the time. With the continued irrelevance of Yes and the softening of the Moody Blues and Genesis, the prog genre seemed to be classified as one of the excesses of the ‘70s. The smarter guys simply changed the rulebook. Or, if you were Robert Fripp, you reformed King Crimson, but only after other attempts at band projects fizzled.

The ‘80s lineup of the band was somewhat related to the one that split up after Red, in that Bill Bruford was still on drums. Tony Levin, fresh from playing on John Lennon’s last sessions, seemed a no-brainer on bass, thanks to his work with Peter Gabriel. But instead of a singing bass player, Fripp took a left turn with the addition of Adrian Belew on vocals and guitar, having recently helped out people as varied as Frank Zappa, David Bowie and Talking Heads. According to Fripp, the band came together first, and it was only after they’d played a few shows that they realized it was King Crimson music. The original name for the quartet became the title of their first album, Discipline.

A tapped bass or Chapman stick sets the program spinning like a top, evolving into a funky figure for Belew to shout words over. “Elephant Talk” is upbeat without being assaultive, and the same can be said for “Frame By Frame”, all spiky chords and dizzying picking. “Matte Kudasai” is nice and dreamy, with a strong melody, but “Indiscipline” returns to the edgy delivery of “Elephant Talk”.

Side two has only one song with a vocal, and that’s “Thela Hun Gingeet”, which maintains the tension with a frenetic African rhythm beating away underneath the chanted melody and a monologue about a street encounter. The rest of the side is instrumental—“The Sheltering Sky” is moody and Arabian, almost like the Police, with strikingly processed guitars, and the title track uses countless polyrhythms, building and building and then just stopping.

It’s Fripp’s band, so he can call it anything he wants. It seems odd for a King Crimson album to not have a Mellotron, and that’s one thing that keeps it from being prog, which Fripp insists they never were to begin with. Discipline does show a progression when viewed in the context of his solo album and other late-‘70s projects. Clearly, he wanted to be in a band.) And if you can stand Adrian Belew’s voice, which does sound a bit like David Byrne’s, then you’ll be fine.

The first expansion of the album added an alternate take of “Matte Kudasai”; this was only included on the DVD portion of the next expansion, alongside several audiophile curios. That CD added two other alternate mixes, plus snippets of “Adrian’s vocal loops”. All of these and some even more pertinent extras (such as “The Terrifying Tale Of Thela Hun Gingeet”, which combines Fripp’s commentary, Adrian’s original recap, and a live version of the song from 1982) would be included in 2016’s hefty On (And Off) The Road box set, which covered the incarnation’s ‘80s adventures.

King Crimson Discipline (1981)—3½
2001 30th Anniversary Edition: same as 1981, plus 1 extra track
2011 40th Anniversary Edition: same as 1981, plus 4 extra tracks (plus DVD)

Robert Fripp 3: The League Of Gentlemen

At a brisk pace to realize his musical vision in his self-imposed “Drive To 1981”, Robert Fripp’s next trick was to get funky. Well, not really; to his mind the natural extension of discotronics would be music that would move your body as well as your mind, and you needed a rhythm section for that. He’d already shared some of this vision on the Under Heavy Manners half of his last album, so he found Barry Andrews, fresh from XTC, to play organ, plus Sara Lee on bass and Jonny Toobad on drums, and thus the League of Gentlemen was formed.

Four months of work on and off the road resulted in something of a repertoire that would make up their one and only album, except that the drummer turned out to have substance abuse issues, so he only played on two tracks of what would be released as The League Of Gentlemen. The other tracks were handled by Kevin Wilkinson, who’d played in the band that had opened up for the League, which is how he learned the songs. To flesh out what he already deemed less than an accurate representation of what the band could do, Fripp took a nod from Exposure and inserted various spoken word sections, some taken from lectures by his spiritual guide J.G. Bennett, some from various Roches, some of a woman in ecstasy, and some lifted from the radio a la My Life In The Bush Of Ghosts. The effect is very much like Zappa’s Lumpy Gravy, and just as strange.

One of these collages opens the album, with “Inductive Resonance” providing relief in an actual musical composition. “Minor Man” is another groove of sorts, but with Danielle Dax mewling over the top. While likely impossible to request by name, “Heptaparaparshinokh” is a bopping little number named after a “cosmic law of seven”, as is the easier-to-pronounce “Dislocated”. “Pareto Optimum I” appears to be synth-based, building slowly on repeated notes, almost Frippertronic-style, while “Eye Needles” is back to the whole combo again. Another collage appears to discuss Fripp’s prowess in non-musical areas, ending side one.

“Pareto Optimum II” continues the experiment of the first, and then “Cognitive Dissonance” is another band track overlaid with Bennett lecturing. The grooves in “H.G. Wells” and “Trap” are also marred, frankly, by voices and moaning where they didn’t need any, but if you listen closely you can hear predictions of the next King Crimson album. That’s it for the band; “Ochre” is a more melodic exploration on the “Pareto Optimum” ideas, and another collage closes us out.

Fripp has maintained that the album was a compromise to meet a contractual obligation, so The League Of Gentlemen has never been reissued in any form; the seven tracks that featured the whole band were included, with extraneous commentary mixed out, on 1985’s God Save The King compilation, which also sampled rejigged tracks from Under Heavy Manners. This limited availability only underscored the original album’s shortcomings.

Besides, the band was at its best live. Years later, once his own DGM label began plundering his archives, Thrang Thrang Gozinbulx presented a compilation of performances by the original combo from club shows in the months before they attempted to put together the album proper. It’s accurately dubbed an “official bootleg”, as the source cassettes were from the back of the venues, with lots of crowd noise competing with the band. Unfortunately, the crowd sounds so rapturous and the size of a stadium crowd, almost comically, to the point of sounding canned.

That said, the music cooks. Besides demonstrating a lot of energy—somewhere between the B-52’s and Metal Box PiL—they seem more like they’re playing together, displaying dynamics missing in the studio. We also get to hear pieces that didn’t make the original album, including three variations of the title track, the more measured “Boy At Piano”; the deceptively titled “Christian Children Marching, Singing”; “Ooh! Mr. Fripp”, which predicts the type of thing he’d play in his next band; and the much slower but still groovy “Farewell Johnny Brill”. Hidden all the way at the end of the disc, following a lengthy silence, are various onstage announcements by Fripp beseeching the band to party and the audience to dance. (Other gigs from the original Gents are available in decent-for-bootleg quality for download at Fripp’s website, as well as in the Exposures box. There we can hear the crowd was certainly receptive, but more engaged beyond mere cheering. Steven Wilson’s modern mixes of the studio tracks, including the God Save The King selections and some unreleased, are also in the set.)

Robert Fripp The League Of Gentlemen (1981)—2½
Robert Fripp/The League Of Gentlemen God Save The King (1985)—2½
The League Of Gentlemen Thrang Thrang Gozinbulx (1996)—3

Robert Fripp 2: Frippertronics

Once finally released, Exposure returned Robert Fripp to the music industry, kind of, and he sought to find his way through it on his own terms. His Frippertronics experiments of improvising over prerecorded loops saw him performing in small, non-standard venues, from record stores to pizza parlors, with the audience up close. This was how he chose to compose, and while making an album out of them wouldn’t be easy, he managed to get two.

The first was given the unwieldy title God Save The Queen/Under Heavy Manners, which suggested they were condensed from what could have been two separate albums. Each half of the title referred to a different side of the record or tape, each built on Frippertronics loops. The first (called “Side A”) offers three performances of increasing lengths, bleeping, and intensity, all sounding very much like No Pussyfooting but without any Eno input. The other (called “Side One”) adds a rhythm section, including Eno and Talking Heads favorite Busta Jones, to the loops, which was Fripp’s idea of “discotronics”. “Under Heavy Manners” begins much like the rest of the track until overdubbed band kicks in, and a pseudonymed David Byrne bleats a raspy vocal. After coming to a halt, Fripp instructs the proceedings to “continue,” and “The Zero Of The Signified” presents a more relentless beat, which eventually fades for the Frippertronics to dominate as they too fade.

A year later, Let The Power Fall presented another full album of Frippertronics from the same 1979 performances that begat the previous set; this time there was no added rhythm section. Three longer pieces alternate with three shorter ones, all similar in structure but differing in intensity. From time to time a melody emerges, and they can be quite lovely, but they come and go, as is the fleeting nature of the music.

These albums are interesting for filling in the blanks between ‘70s Crimson and ‘80s Crimson, but they are not easy listening. Fripp has always preferred live performance to a static media format to express himself musically, so these pieces may well have been more exciting for those who witnessed them take shape out of seemingly nowhere. In fact, 2022’s Exposures box set collected further hours’ worth of Fripp performances from this period on five CDs, and even more on Blu-ray, so the selections that made up these two albums had to have stood out somehow.

When some of his back catalog was first prepared for CD in the mid-‘80s, Fripp couldn’t help “revising” (his term) some of the music. 1985’s God Save The King compilation augmented the Under Heavy Manners half with music from 1981’s dance-oriented The League of Gentlemen. The “title track” was a rejigged “The Zero Of The Signified” with a new, more furious solo overdubbed throughout. This track, along with the previously unreleased jam “Music On Hold”, was included as a bonus on the first-ever CD reissue of Queen/Manners, following their inclusion in Exposures. Meanwhile, Let The Power Fall got a “Definitive Edition” CD release in 1989 alongside other King Crimson albums; its reissue in the wake of Exposures sported extras consisting of a single edit and two alternate mixes, all of the “1984” track.

Also hidden within the multitude of discs in the Exposures doorstop was one little surprise, and deemed of such importance that it was also released on its own. Washington Square Church was recorded during a residency at the New York City venue of the same name in the summer of 1981. What makes this collection of Frippertronics stand out is that not only do we hear the loops used for the performances, but for the first time, they are synchronized with his live improvised solos—a facet that made each Frippertronics concert a unique and intimate experience. At times pastoral and at others frenzied, this is probably the best way to hear Frippertronics without being there.

As technology evolved, so did Fripp’s approach to Frippertronics. By the ‘90s they had evolved into “soundscapes”, and resulted in a series of self-published CDs and downloads. Possibly their widest exposure came during 2020’s Covid lockdown, when a weekly “Music For Quiet Moments” was plucked from the archives and distributed via YouTube and streaming sites, eventually collected as a box set. Now numbering in the dozens, these will not be explored in this forum.

Robert Fripp God Save The Queen/Under Heavy Manners (1980)—2
2022 reissue: same as 1980, plus 2 extra tracks
Robert Fripp Let The Power Fall (1981)—2
2022 reissue: same as 1981, plus 3 extra tracks
Robert Fripp Washington Square Church (2022)—3

Robert Fripp 1: Exposure

Something of a sabbatical followed Robert Fripp’s most recent disbanding of King Crimson. He immersed himself in a spiritual philosophy, to which he adheres and practices to this day. Musically, he explored the possibilities of Frippertronics, the guitar/tape loop method he’d first developed with Brian Eno. He also spent time in the Greenwich Village punk scene, producing the Roches and working with Daryl Hall, adding his touches to David Bowie’s “Heroes” album, and even accompanying Peter Gabriel on his first solo tour. That experience led him to produce Gabriel’s second album, which features the piece that also is the title of the album at hand.

Exposure is presented as a suite, incorporating eavesdropped conversations, interviews old and new, and Fripp’s own compositions. Easily the most striking thing about the album is the appearance of Daryl Hall, singing in the voice that sold bazillions of Top 40 records, yet fitting very well into the album.

Other, more learned “Fripp scholars” have delved deeply into the evolution of this album, and on paper (or screen) it reads a lot more out there than it actually is. What stands out is just how accessible it is. “Preface” is akin to an orchestra tuning up, jostled by the straight rock of “You Burn Me Up I’m A Cigarette”, which features the most basic chord changes in Fripp’s catalog under Daryl Hall’s pounding piano and vocal. That said, “Breathless” sounds the most like Crimson (the Red era, at least). “Disengage” starts quietly before what sounds like Daryl Hall again but is really Peter Hammill shrieking his way through the jam. Hall’s more at home on “North Star”, while Hammill sounds downright vampiric on “Chicago”. “NY3” pits a furious fusion jam against a shouting match from Fripp’s neighbors, so that the much softer “Mary”, with its pretty vocal, plucked guitar and Frippertronics, provides welcome relief.

The title track is basically an alternate mix of the Gabriel version, but augmented by Terre Roche singing and screaming the title to the point of distress while Fripp and Eno spell it. Another series of aphorisms punctuates “Häaden Two”, the mild cacophony giving way to the bleak “Urban Landscape”. Suddenly “I May Not Have Had Enough Of Me But I’ve Had Enough Of You” crashes through with a more “melodic” lovers’ spat. An allegedly condensed lecture provides a burst (worthy of John & Yoko) before the sequence that ends the album. “Water Music I” presents Frippertronics accompanied by another lecture, segueing into a lovely Peter Gabriel piano-and-vocal rendition of his own “Here Comes The Flood”, followed by a moment of silence and the evocative sound painting of “Water Music II”. The “Postscript” echoes “Preface”.

The album has been rejigged more times than necessary, mostly because Fripp’s original plan to have more Daryl Hall was not approved by the singer’s label before it was even released in the first place. (Nor did they like the solo album Fripp produced for him.) He remixed Exposure for digital in the mid-‘80s, and a so-called “Definitive Edition” was the only way to get it on CD, although here “Water Music II” ran a few minutes longer. In this century, the album was reissued in a set with its original mix on one disc, with a “Third Edition” on a second, which presented the remix with Daryl Hall’s vocal tracks (and occasionally, alternate lyrics) reinstated where applicable. In this context, not only is it easier to see a bridge to the Adrian Belew era of King Crimson, but makes one ponder a bizarro world those early ‘80s Hall & Oates hits didn’t exist, given Hall’s continued collaboration with Fripp.

A later “Fourth Edition” paired a new remix by Stephen Wilson on a CD with a DVD containing a surround mix of same, a remaster of the Third Edition, and an early sequence when the album was to be called Last Of The Great New York Heartthrobs and featuring all of Hall’s original vocals. All editions were part of the 2022’s massive Exposures box set, which—to oversimplify it—culled the majority of the music Fripp created in the years between the 1974 and 1980s Crimson lineups, on CD and again in higher definition on DVD and/or Blu-ray. A fifth version of Exposure, titled Breathless, Or How I Gradually Internalised The Social Reality Of Manhattan Until It Seemed To Be A Very Reasonable Way Of Life, was exclusive to the box, and included Wilson remixes of the Heartthrobs sequence.

Because of its disparate musical styles, even Crimson fans might find Exposure less than satisfying. It was obviously a big deal to Fripp, and thirty years of hindsight better show where it fits into the story at large. (As for the Daryl Hall album, Sacred Songs was finally released a year later, and mixed standard Hall & Oates blue-eyed soul with Frippertronics, most notably halfway through side two in the middle of “Babs And Babs”, leading to “Urban Landscape” and “NYCNY”, which was “I May Have Had Enough Of Me” with different lyrics and melody from Hall. The rest of the players include three guys from the Hall & Oates band who’d most recently been in Elton John’s band. How this album and the Peter Gabriel album fit into Fripp’s grand trilogy concept remains elusive.)

Robert Fripp Exposure (1979)—3
2006 CD reissue: same as 1979, plus 22 extra tracks

King Crimson 10: A Young Person’s Guide

While King Crimson was considered strictly past tense in 1976, Robert Fripp wasn’t about to let anyone forget what they were, or could have been. A Young Person’s Guide To King Crimson may well have been a contractual obligation, but this two-record compilation, packaged with a booklet crammed with photos, clippings, and a timeline, offered even the converted fan something special. More importantly, it provided a primer for newcomers.

True to his insistence that King Crimson music could not be solely defined by the players, the music is not chronological, nor is “21st Century Schizoid Man” included at all. Side one manages to encompass “Epitaph”, an “abridged” “Cadence And Cascade”, and “Ladies Of The Road”, ending with the ultra-rare Giles, Giles And Fripp take of “I Talk To The Wind”, featuring Fairport Convention’s Judy Dyble on vocals—the only woman ever to perform on a Crimson album. Side two consists of exactly two songs: the title track from Red and that album’s stellar “Starless”.

Side three juggles two different lineups, going from “Book Of Saturday” and “The Night Watch” back to “Peace” and the single version of “Cat Food” from the second album, and tossing in the rare “Groon” B-side before picking up the last two minutes of “Larks’ Tongues In Aspic, Part One”. Side four offers the first two minutes of “Moonchild” (a.k.a. the song portion) and the Bruford-less “Trio” before closing with “The Court Of The Crimson King”, unabridged.

Fripp would go on to use the Young Person’s Guide nomenclature for similar archival digs in the decades to come, and most of these tracks would continue to feature on same. As it is, A Young Person’s Guide To King Crimson itself has never been reissued on CD outside of Japan, where seemingly everything emerges sometime, though the music is readily available numerous places, and cheaper.

King Crimson A Young Person’s Guide To King Crimson (1976)—4
Current CD availability: none

King Crimson 9: USA

1972’s live Earthbound album signified what Robert Fripp thought was the end of King Crimson, since he hadn’t come across the musicians that would carry the band through Red. Now that the band had once again reached a conclusion, another live album became a bookend.

In sharp contrast to Earthbound, USA—recorded at the end of the tour immediately preceding the recording of Red—sports much better sound overall. With John Wetton and Bill Bruford, this was arguably the best Crimson lineup that didn’t include Tony Levin. Also, given Fripp’s insistence on audio-vérité, some tracks were enhanced in the studio by prog figure Eddie Jobson, who wasn’t even in the band. Still while his contributions are noted, they are well blended into the mix, with David Cross’s original contributions still audible.

After a snippet from “The Heavenly Music Corporation” over the PA, the band crashes in with “Larks’ Tongues In Aspic Part II”. Somehow the finale from that album becomes just as effective an opener here. “Lament” and “Exiles” are ably tackled, also showing how well the Mellotron stayed in tune. “Asbury Park”—like “Providence” on Red—gets its title from the city where it was recorded, and is an improv certainly worthy of inclusion. “Easy Money” follows shortly, although it fades before whatever the actual ending was, and the band is brought full circle with an excellent take on “Schizoid Man”, complete with requisite distortion on the vocal.

By this time Fripp had been sure to record as many of the band’s shows as possible, so there was a lot more where this came from, as would be revealed one day. Despite the overdubbing, USA is still a tight album, and an excellent souvenir of this period of the band, certainly for the time being. In other words, mission accomplished.

To preserve the listening experience of the original LP, two tracks from the same show were added for the 30th Anniversary Edition: “Fracture” and a wonderful “Starless” that predates the Red version. A decade or so after that, the 40th Anniversary Edition presented the complete concert as performed, with full versions of the “Asbury Park” and “Easy Money” improv sections, no Eddie Jobson overdubs, and closing with “Schizoid Man” from the actual show as opposed to the one on the original album from a few days later. A DVD included the soon-to-be customary his-res mixes, plus a remaster of the 30th Anniversary sequence and a transfer of the original LP.

King Crimson USA (1975)—4
2002 30th Anniversary Edition: same as 1975, plus 2 extra tracks
2013 40th Anniversary Edition: “same” as 2002, plus 1 extra track (plus DVD)