King Crimson - Pictures Of A City
King Crimson - Lament
King Crimson burst onto the 1969 scene armed with a “new” instrument, the mellotron, which allowed them to simulate the sound of an orchestra. Relying on this technical innovation, the band emphasized the neo-classical tendencies of Nice, Moody Blues, and Procol Harum while simultaneously absorbing the influences of psychedelic music. This gave birth to a style that was fabled, majestic, medieval, and exotic, unprecedented in its scope. Although it departed from the highly emotional format of rock and roll, the genre invented by King Crimson was still charged with emotion, more on the side of romantic “pathos” than delinquent fury. The band would go on to remain a beacon for progressive rock, particularly the jazz-rock variant, and Robert Fripp would emerge as one of the sharpest minds in rock music.
Guitarist Robert Fripp and drummer Mike Giles met in Giles Giles & Fripp, who released The Cheerful Insanity Of (Dream, 1968). The following year, they formed a quartet with bassist and vocalist Greg Lake and multi-instrumentalist Ian McDonald, who alternated between saxophone and keyboards. The “fifth” member of the band was lyricist Pete Sinfield, responsible for the grandiose and slightly grotesque texts.
In The Court Of The Crimson King (Island, 1969) remains one of the greatest masterpieces of progressive rock of all time, and the one that best represents its “romantic” current. The epitome of their romantic phase is the sublime vision/hallucination of In The Court Of The Crimson King, a suite-ballet that fuses medieval folk, Renaissance song, jazz-rock, psychedelic music, and classical symphonism in a fantastical flight of imagination.
King Crimson performed an almost alchemical synthesis of classical music, jazz, and rock (three elements well represented by the three lead instruments: mellotron, saxophone, and guitar). Magniloquence was actually a detail; the salient fact lay in their ability to merge such different traditions. The band’s technique shone in the almost delirious chromaticism of the compositions, where the instruments seemed to compete to decorate with ever-stronger colors. Fripp’s calligraphic guitar style paired magnificently with McDonald’s electronic bursts, Lake’s graceful accompaniment, and Giles’ martial pacing.
The true introduction to the band’s fairy-tale universe, however, is I Talk To The Wind, a delicate ballad accompanied by oboe and vibraphone reverberations. The first great symphonic masterpiece is Epitaph, which opens with a majestic swell of mellotron, immediately reduced to a martial and melancholic whisper; in its solemn, classical-like progression, in its apocalyptic crescendo, and in the meticulous arrangement of every sequence, the King Crimson trademark is recognizable. A meticulous timbral-rhythmic architecture, cell upon sound cell, supported their delicate folk melodies.
The masterpiece within the masterpiece was actually Moonchild, a long suite and the least linear track. Here, the gothic atmospheres of the other pieces are set in a futuristic scenario: the subdued, android-like refrain sinks into a swamp of dissonant sounds and percussive noise.
21st Century Schizoid Man seems almost out of place, as it attacks with symphonic syncopation and a distorted slogan before launching into a furious jam (with a suggestive guitar frenzy and ferocious sax bursts).
Following the first album, the band released In The Wake Of Poseydon (1970), which simply deepened the “mythological” aspect of the first album with even more grandiose sound effects. The group had also expanded to six members with the addition of two jazz musicians: Mel Collins on winds and Keith Tippett on keyboards. The result was a suggestive and baroque fresco blending surrealism and gothic, particularly in the three long suites: Pictures of a City, another neurotic jazz-rock piece in the style of 21st Century Schizoid Man; In the Wake of Poseidon, another threatening and classical-style suite in the manner of Crimson King; and The Devil's Triangle, a cryptic and depressed instrumental. The album even gave the band their most accessible single (Cat Food).
While Poseydon had simply been a repetition of the themes from the first album, Lizard (1970) instead began the progression toward an increasingly abstract and less melodic sound. Lake (who had moved on to EL&P) was replaced by Gordon Haskell, and McDonald had also left the band (he would form the Foreigner). The album was even more pretentious than the first two, and it was also plagued by convoluted, disjointed, glacial, and cerebral structures, closer to classical music and jazz than to rock and roll. Here, King Crimson are, for all intents and purposes, a chamber ensemble.
Cirkus is the least cerebral and most emotional track, but the fusion is particularly unsettling and imposing in the vast melodic fantasy of Lizard, which gives the album its title. Its first movement, Prince Rupert Awakes, signals the transition from the old pompous style to a new, subtle, and mysterious style. The second movement, The Peacock's Tale, is a sonata for piano, oboe, and trombone. The third, The Battle of Glass Tears, is an almost cacophonic nightmare.
The pulsating fragments of Moonchild had paved the way for an experimental mannerism that culminated in Formentera Lady, the tour de force of Islands (1971). Sailor's Tale (featuring one of the most famous guitar solos in prog-rock) and Islands are abstract ballads wandering aimlessly in a harmonic universe worthy of Dali’s paintings. King Crimson had become the negation of rock music, for better or worse.
Meanwhile, the lineup continued to change due to Fripp’s tyrannical character, and eventually the guitarist found himself alone. He did not miss the opportunity and refounded King Crimson on bases more jazz than rock, surrounding himself with the talents of Bill Bruford (drums, ex-Yes), John Wetton (bass, ex-Family), and David Cross (violin). The sound of Lark's Tongues In Aspic (1973), at once harsh and fluid, skewed and geometric, cerebral and violent, represents another major achievement, even though it lost all the pathos of the early King Crimson. Lark's Tongues In Aspic is one of the most exemplary suites of Fripp’s career, while Book Of Saturday and Easy Money are gag-songs among the best in the repertoire. Fripp emerged as the inventor of one of the most distinctive and influential guitar styles.
This "creative" quartet then recorded Starless And Bible Black (1974), which contains two relatively simple rock songs (The Great Deceiver and Lament), the ballad The Night Watch, and two long jams of tense and incoherent fusion, Starless And Bible Black and the perpetuum mobile of Fracture (based on the whole-tone scale).
Having lost David Cross, King Crimson were practically a trio (Fripp, Bruford, and Wetton) on Red (1974), the most original album in the direction of that violent and abrasive instrumental sound, featuring hammering nightmares like Red, fragmented deliriums like Providence, and cosmic outbursts like Starless, tracks as adventurous as they are challenging.
In 1981 Fripp resurrects the corpse of King Crimson. The new lineup features the multi-percussionist dragon Bill Bruford, the inventive psychedelic guitar of Adrian Belew, and the titanically jazzy bass of Tony Levin. The electro-funk bricolage of Discipline (WB, 1981 - Discipline, 2006) derives from the Eno-Byrne album and the New York new wave in general: cerebral dance music, minimalism, alienation, ethnic gags. The schizophrenia of the group lies in the fact that on one hand it produces accessible dance music (the usual play of melodic counterpoints and rhythmic cycles), while on the other hand it returns (mostly with instrumental tracks) to the experimental harshness of the second King Crimson (the mystical-galactic Sheltering Sky perhaps represents Fripp’s absolute peak in this direction).
The importance of the ensemble lies rather in the revolutionary techniques applied to their respective instruments. As fluid and incisive as their sounds are, they are "treated" to shift emphasis toward traditionally neglected possibilities. In this sense, Belew’s "mimic" guitar and Levin’s "percussive" bass represent the most sensational achievements. Fripp and Belew together form the most disoriented guitar duo ever to confront a rock group, a "mobile and intelligent" sarabande of animal guitars, onomatopoeic guitars, pneumatic guitars, industrial guitars, and digital guitars. The symmetry and balance achieved by this cool, collective music (far outside the usual conventions) open the door to a new concept of a rock ensemble. Frame by Frame, Thela Hun Ginjeet, Elephant Talk, Discipline are no longer rock music, even though the format remains that of rock music.
Beat (EG, 1982), a tribute to the "beat generation," also incorporates electronics and world music (Requiem), hard rock (Two Hands), and flirts with pop (Heartbeat, Neal And Jack And Me, Waiting Man), while Three Of A Perfect Pair (EG, 1983), mostly instrumental, including Lark's Tongues In Aspic Part III, concludes the trilogy of the new King Crimson. From: https://www.scaruffi.com/vol2/kingcrim.html
