King Crimson
Encyclopedia
King Crimson are a rock band founded in London, England in 1969. Often categorised as a foundational progressive rock
group, the band have incorporated diverse influences and instrumentation during their history (including jazz
and folk music
, classical and experimental music
, psychedelic rock
, hard rock
and heavy metal
, new wave
, gamelan
, electronica
and drum and bass
). They have been influential on many contemporary musical artists and have gained a large cult following
, despite garnering little radio or music video airplay.
Though originating in England, King Crimson have had a mixture of English and American personnel since 1981. The band's line-up (centred on guitarist Robert Fripp
) has persistently altered throughout their existence, with eighteen musicians and two lyricists passing through the ranks; though a greater degree of stability was achieved later in their history, with Adrian Belew
having been a consistent member since 1981.
The debut line-up of the band was influential but short-lived, lasting for just over one year. Between 1970 and 1971, King Crimson were an unstable band, with many personnel changes and disjunctions between studio and live sound as they explored elements of jazz, funk
and classical chamber music. By 1972 the band had a more stable line-up and developed an improvisational sound
mingling hard rock, contemporary classical music
, free jazz
and jazz fusion
before breaking up in 1974. They re-formed with a new line-up in 1981 for three years (this time influenced by new wave and gamelan music) before breaking up again for around a decade. Since reforming for the second time (in 1994), King Crimson have blended aspects of their 1980s and 1970s sound with influences from more recent musical genres such as industrial rock
and grunge
. The band’s efforts to blend additional elements into their music have continued into the 21st century, with more recent developments including drum and bass-styled rhythm loops and extensive use of MIDI and guitar synthesis.
King Crimson's existence has been characterised by regular periods of hiatus initiated by Robert Fripp, and their current status is ambiguous. Despite online diary posts from Fripp suggesting that he does not feel a powerful desire to work within the King Crimson context, he and other members continue to work within the context of related "ProjeKCts" (an ongoing succession of spin-offs from the main band initiated in 1997, of which the latest example is the song-based "Jakszyk, Fripp and Collins").
(drums) and Peter Giles (bass) who had been professional musicians in various jobbing bands since their mid-teens in Dorset
, advertised for a singing organist to join their new project. Fellow Dorset musician Robert Fripp
– a guitarist who did not sing – responded and the trio formed the band Giles, Giles and Fripp
.
Based on a format of eccentric pop songs and complex instrumentals, the band recorded several unsuccessful singles and one album, The Cheerful Insanity of Giles, Giles and Fripp. The band hovered on the edge of success, with several radio sessions and a television appearance, but never scored the hit that would have been crucial for a commercial breakthrough. The album was no more of a success than the singles, and was even disparaged by Keith Moon
of The Who
in a magazine review. Attempting to expand their sound, Giles, Giles and Fripp
then recruited the multi-instrumentalist Ian McDonald
on keyboards, reeds and woodwinds. McDonald brought along his then-girlfriend, the former Fairport Convention
singer Judy Dyble
, whose tenure with the group was brief and ended at the same time as her romantic split with McDonald (she would later resurface in Trader Horne). More significantly, McDonald brought in lyricist, roadie and art strategist Peter Sinfield
, with whom he had been writing songs – a partnership initiated when McDonald had said to Sinfield, regarding his 1968 band Creation, "Peter, I have to tell you that your band is hopeless, but you write some great words. Would you like to get together on a couple of songs?" One of the first songs McDonald and Sinfield wrote together was "The Court of the Crimson King
".
Fripp, meanwhile, had seen the band 1-2-3 (later known as Clouds
) at the Marquee
. This band would later inspire some of Crimson's penchant for classical melodies and jazz-like improvisation. Feeling that he no longer wished to pursue Peter Giles' more whimsical pop style, Fripp recommended his friend Greg Lake
, a singer and guitarist, for recruitment into the band, with the suggestion that Lake should replace either him or Peter Giles. Although Peter Giles would later sardonically describe this as one of Fripp's "cute political moves", he himself had become disillusioned with Giles, Giles and Fripp's failure to break through, and stepped down to be replaced by Lake as the band's bass player, singer and frontman. At this point, the band morphed into what would become King Crimson.
as a synonym for Beelzebub
, prince of demons. According to Fripp, Beelzebub would be an anglicised
form of the Arabic phrase "B'il Sabab", meaning "the man with an aim" – although it literally means "with a cause". At this point, Ian McDonald was King Crimson’s main composer, albeit with significant contributions from Lake and Fripp, while Sinfield not only wrote all the lyrics but designed and operated the band’s revolutionary stage lighting, and was therefore credited with "sounds and visions". McDonald suggested the new band purchase a Mellotron
(the first example of the band’s persistent involvement with music technology) and they began using it to create an orchestral rock sound, inspired by The Moody Blues
.
King Crimson made their live debut on 9 April 1969, and made a breakthrough by playing the free concert in Hyde Park, London
, staged by The Rolling Stones
in July 1969 before 650,000 people.
, was released in October 1969 on Island Records
. Fripp would later describe it as having been "an instant smash" and "New York's
acid
album of 1970" (notwithstanding Fripp and Giles' claim that the band never used psychedelic drugs). The album received public compliments from Pete Townshend
, The Who
's guitarist, who called the album "an uncanny masterpiece." The sound of In the Court of the Crimson King
(specifically the track, "21st Century Schizoid Man") has also been described as setting the antecedent for alternative rock
and grunge
, whilst the softer tracks are described as having an "ethereal" and "almost sacred" feel. In contrast to the blues-based hard rock of the contemporary British and American scenes, King Crimson presented a more Europeanised approach that blended antiquity and modernity. The band's music drew on a wide range of influences provided by all five group members. These elements included romantic- and modernist-era classical music
, the psychedelic rock spearheaded by Jimi Hendrix
, folk
, jazz
, military music (partially inspired by McDonald’s stint as an army musician), ambient improvisation, Victoriana
and British pop.
After playing shows in England, the band embarked on a tour of the United States, performing alongside many contemporary popular musicians and musical groups. Their first US show was performed at Goddard College, in Plainfield, Vermont. While their original sound astounded contemporary audiences and critics, creative tensions were already developing within the band. Michael Giles and Ian McDonald, still striving to cope with King Crimson’s rapid success and the realities of life on the road, became uneasy with the band’s direction. Although he was neither the dominant composer in the band nor the frontman, Fripp was very much the band’s driving force and spokesman, leading King Crimson into progressively darker and more intense musical areas. McDonald and Giles, now favouring a lighter and more romantic style of music, became increasingly uncomfortable with their position and resigned from the band during the California tour. In order to salvage what he saw as the most important elements of King Crimson, Fripp offered to resign himself, but McDonald and Giles declared that the band was “more (him) than them” and that they should therefore be the ones to leave.
The original line-up played their last show together in San Francisco at the Fillmore West
on 16 December 1969. Ian McDonald and Michael Giles then formally left King Crimson to pursue solo work, recording the semi-successful McDonald and Giles
studio album in 1970 before dissolving their partnership (McDonald would later resurface in Foreigner
while Giles became a session drummer). Live recordings of the original King Crimson’s concerts were eventually released twenty-seven years later in 1996 as the double/quadruple live album Epitaph and in the King Crimson Collector's Club releases.
From the start of 1970 until mid-1971, King Crimson remained in a state of flux with fluctuating line-ups, thwarted tour plans and difficulties in finding a satisfactory musical direction. (This period has subsequently been referred to as the "interregnum" – a nickname implying that the "King" (King Crimson) was not properly in place during this time.) Greg Lake
was the next member to leave, departing in early 1970 after being approached by Keith Emerson to join what would become Emerson, Lake & Palmer
. This left Fripp as the only remaining musician in the band, taking on part of the keyboard-playing role in addition to guitar. To compensate, Sinfield increased his own creative role and began developing his interest in synthesisers for use on subsequent records.
was recorded by a mixture of the remaining members (Fripp and Sinfield) and their former associates. Michael Giles returned to play drums on a session only basis, joined by Peter Giles on bass. At one point, the band considered hiring the then-unknown Elton John
(on spec) to be the album's singer, but decided against it. Instead (and in exchange for receiving King Crimson's PA equipment as payment), Lake agreed to sing on the band's developing second album In the Wake of Poseidon
, covering all of the album’s vocal tracks except "Cadence And Cascade", which was sung by Fripp's old schoolfriend and teenage bandmate Gordon Haskell
. Mel Collins (formerly of the band Cirkus) contributed saxophones and flute. Another key performer was jazz pianist Keith Tippett
, who became an integral part of King Crimson's sound for the next few records. Although Fripp offered him full band membership, Tippett preferred to remain as a studio collaborator and performed live with the band only once. In the Wake of Poseidon was moderately well received on release, but was criticised as sounding very similar in both style and content to the band's debut album, to the point where it seemed like an imitation.
on sale, Fripp and Sinfield had material and releases to promote, but no band to play them. In considerable desperation, Fripp persuaded Gordon Haskell to join permanently as singer and bass player and also recruited former Shy Limbs/Manfred Mann's Earth Band
drummer Andy McCulloch (another Dorset musician moving in the West London progressive rock circle). Mel Collins was also retained as a full band member. Both Haskell and McCulloch joined King Crimson in time to participate in the recording sessions for the band's third album, Lizard
, but had no say in the writing of the material. Fripp and Sinfield, now effectively equal artistic partners, had written the entire album themselves and had also brought in a squad of jazz musicians to help record it – Keith Tippett, cornet player Marc Charig
, trombonist Nick Evans and oboe player Robin Miller. Jon Anderson
of Yes
was also brought in to perform vocals on one song ("Prince Rupert Awakes") which Fripp and Sinfield considered to be outside Haskell’s range and style. Lizard featured much stronger avant-garde jazz and chamber-classical influences than previous albums, as well as Sinfield’s upfront experiments with processing and distorting sound through the VCS3 synthesiser. It also featured Sinfield’s most complex set of allusive lyrics to date, including a coded song about the break-up of the Beatles, with almost the entire second side taken up by a predominantly instrumental chamber suite describing a mediaeval battle and its outcome.
Lizard has subsequently been described as being an "acquired taste": it was definitely not to the taste of the more rhythm-and-blues-oriented Haskell and McCulloch, who did not enjoy the sessions and rapidly became disillusioned. Haskell also realised that he would be playing material that he had no sympathy for, and that he would have no creative input into King Crimson for the foreseeable future. Just prior to the release of Lizard, Haskell quit the band acrimoniously, having refused to sing through distortion and electronic effects for live concerts. McCulloch quit immediately afterwards, later joining Arthur Brown
's band and subsequently becoming the drummer for Greenslade
in 1972. Fripp and Sinfield were forced to return to the arduous process of auditioning new members.
(a former bandmate of Jon Anderson
). Auditionees for the role of singer included Bryan Ferry
and the band's manager John Gaydon, but the post went to Raymond "Boz" Burrell
, who’d previously worked with his own band Boz People and at one point had been tipped to replace Roger Daltrey
in The Who
. Fripp approached bass player John Wetton
(ex Mogul Thrash
) in mid-1971 to complete the line-up, but Wetton declined in order to accept a place in Family
, although he kept in touch with Fripp. Rick Kemp
was eventually selected as the new bass player but turned the band down at the last minute. Once again faced with limited choices, Fripp and Wallace taught Boz to play the bass rather than start the search all over again. Although Boz had not played bass before, he had played enough occasional rhythm guitar to make learning the instrument easier.
In 1971, King Crimson undertook their first tour since 1969 with the new line-up. The concerts were well received, but the roots-based musical inclinations and rock-and-roll lifestyle favoured by Burrell, Collins and Wallace began to alienate the drug-free, more cerebral Fripp. He began to withdraw socially from his colleagues, creating tension that spread to the rest of the band, although King Crimson completed the tour intact.
. The band's warmest-sounding record to date, it was strongly influenced by Miles Davis’s orchestral collaborations with Gil Evans and had a loose thematic connection with Homer
’s Odyssey
. It also showed signs of a stylistic divergence between Sinfield (who favoured the softer and more textural jazz-folk approach) and Fripp (who was drawn more towards the harsher instrumental style exemplified by the instrumental "Sailor’s Tale" with its dramatic Mellotron use and banjo-inspired guitar technique). Islands also featured the band’s one-and-only experiment with a string ensemble ("Prelude: Song of the Gulls") and the raunchy rhythm-and-blues-inspired "Ladies of the Road" – by far the closest representation of the band’s live style, and probably the only track that the whole band liked. A hint of trouble to come came when one (unnamed) member of the band allegedly described the more delicate and meditative parts of Islands as "airy-fairy shit".
Following the next tour, Fripp ousted Sinfield (with whom his relationship had deteriorated) claiming musical differences and a loss of faith in his partner’s ideas. (Sinfield would go on to release a solo album, Still, featuring all of the current and previous members of King Crimson aside from Fripp, and then reunited with Greg Lake by becoming the principal lyricist for Emerson, Lake & Palmer
: many years later, he would achieve great success writing pop songs for Bucks Fizz
.) The remaining band broke up acrimoniously in rehearsals shortly afterwards, due to Fripp’s refusal to incorporate other members’ compositions into the band’s repertoire. (He later cited this as "quality control" and an attempt to ensure that King Crimson was performing the "right kind" of music.)
The band were persuaded to reform in order to fulfil their 1972 tour commitments, with the intention of disbanding afterwards. Recordings from this tour were later released as the Earthbound
live album, noted and criticised for its bootleg-level sound quality and a style that occasionally veered towards funk
, with scat singing
on the improvised pieces. This was a flagrant sign of the musical rift between Fripp and all three of the other members, the latter of whom were attempting to steer the band back towards a rootsier rhythm-and-blues style in open defiance of Fripp. Despite these problems, relationships across the band gradually improved during the tour to the point where Collins, Burrell and Wallace offered to continue with the band. However, Fripp had already decided to entirely restructure King Crimson with a new musical direction that he felt was entirely unsuited to the current band, and was already recruiting new members.
Having spent a long time being critically overshadowed by the preceding and subsequent line-ups of King Crimson, the Islands line-up of the band benefited from positive reappraisal in the mid-2000s following the release of several live archive releases (including the double live set Ladies of the Road and various King Crimson Collectors Club recordings) and reassessments by Fripp and other band members. Fripp would subsequently mend his damaged relationships with Wallace and Collins, although not with Burrell.
percussionist Jamie Muir
, who had previously worked with Sunship and Derek Bailey. In the first of King Crimson’s “double drummer” line-ups, he was paired with former Yes
drummer Bill Bruford
, who had chosen to leave the commercially successful Yes
at the peak of their early career in favour of the comparatively unstable and unpredictable King Crimson. Fripp also finally secured John Wetton
as King Crimson’s singer and bass player, recruiting him directly from Family
. The line-up was completed by David Cross
, a relatively unknown violinist (doubling on keyboards) whom Fripp had encountered through work with music colleges.
With Sinfield gone, the band recruited a new lyricist, Wetton's friend Richard Palmer-James
(the former guitarist for Supertramp
). Unlike Sinfield, Palmer-James played no part in artistic, visual or sonic direction. His sole contributions to King Crimson were his lyrics, sent by post to Wetton from his home in Hamburg.
's songwriting and arrangements or the influence of Sinfield’s elaborate conceptual lyrics and references, and as such was also the first King Crimson record to escape from the shadow of the debut album.
The band's new sound was exemplified by the album's two-part title track
– a significant change from what King Crimson had done before, drawing from influences as diverse as Bartók
, the free music scene, Vaughan Williams
and the embryonic heavy metal
sound,
and featuring a whisper-to-scream dynamic that was extreme even by the band's previous standards. There were some nods to the past in the continued use of Mellotron, as well as in the inclusion of stately ballads, but the band now featured a small ensemble sound with an emphasis on instrumental music. In particular, the record was permeated by Muir’s freewheeling approach to percussion and “found” instrumentation, utilising everything from a prepared drumkit to bicycle-horn bulbs, toys, bullroarers, gongs hit with chains, foley
-style sound effects and a joke laughing-bag. Wetton’s loud, crisp and overdriven playing style provided King Crimson’s most distinctive bass playing to date, while Fripp’s guitar playing had taken on a wiry and aggressive character previously seldom heard in the band’s studio recordings.
Following more touring, the group became a quartet in early 1973 when Muir suddenly departed. This was initially thought to have been due to an onstage injury – a dropped gong landing on his foot during a gig at the Marquee. Twenty-seven years later it was revealed that Muir had gone through a personal spiritual crisis and had to immediately withdraw from the band, who themselves had not been told the truth about the situation by their management. Bruford took on additional Muir influenced percussion duties to flesh out the band's sound.
During the lengthy tour that followed, the remaining members assembled material for their next album, Starless and Bible Black
. This was released in January 1974, earning them a positive Rolling Stone
review. The album built on the achievements of its predecessor, precariously balancing improvised material with careening heavy-metal riffs and songs that recalled both the Beatles’ White Album experiments and aspects of electric jazz fusion as performed by the Mahavishnu Orchestra and Miles Davis
.
Two-thirds of the album was instrumental, including Fripp’s climactic moto perpetuo composition "Fracture" and the atonal sound painting of the title track. For the recording of "Trio" – a hushed and wistful improvised melody featuring Wetton on bass, Cross on violin and Fripp on flute-Mellotron – Bruford notoriously contributed “admirable restraint” by sitting with his drumsticks crossed over his chest throughout the piece, understanding that the music did not require him to add anything, and was thus given compositional credit equal to the rest of his bandmates. Although most of Starless and Bible Black
had been recorded at live performances, it was painstakingly edited to sound like another studio album. Fuller documentation of the quartet’s live work was revealed eighteen years later on 1992’s four-disc live recording The Great Deceiver, and again on 1997’s double live album The Night Watch, which used the original source tapes for much of the material on Starless And Bible Black.
By this time, the band were once again beginning to divide into performance factions. Musically, Fripp found himself positioned between Bruford and Wetton, who played with such force and increasing volume that Fripp once compared them to “a flying brick wall”, and Cross whose amplified acoustic violin was increasingly being drowned out by the rhythm section, forcing him to concentrate more on keyboards. An increasingly frustrated Cross began to withdraw musically and personally, with the result that he was voted out of the group following the band's 1974 tour of Europe and America, playing his final performance in Central Park
in New York.
. Unknown to the other two, Fripp, increasingly disillusioned with the music business, had been turning his attention to the writings of the mystic George Gurdjieff, and experienced a spiritual crisis-cum-awakening immediately before the band entered the studio. He would later describe his experience as having seemed as if “the top of my head blew off.” Although most of the album material had been written, the transformed Fripp retreated into himself in the studio and “withdrew his opinion”, leaving Bruford and Wetton to direct most of the sessions.
In spite of this, Red proved to be one of the strongest and most consistent King Crimson albums to date. It has been described as "an impressive achievement" for a group about to disband, with "intensely dynamic" musical chemistry between the band members. Opening with the harsh, tritone-based instrumental that gave the album its name, the album also featured two relatively short and punchy Wetton-led songs, and a last look back at the period with David Cross via the live improvisation “Providence”, which was recorded on the preceding tour. The album finale was the majestic twelve-minute “Starless”, which acted, in effect, as a potted musical history of the band, travelling from Mellotron-driven ballad grandeur via intense improvisation to savagely structured metallic attack and back again. Red also included guest appearances by former members and collaborators. In addition to Cross’s appearance on “Providence”, Robin Miller and Marc Charig
returned on oboe and cornet for the first time since Islands, and both Mel Collins
and Ian McDonald
played saxophone
s on “Starless”.
With one of their strongest albums ready to promote, King Crimson’s future prospects looked bright, and talks were underway regarding Ian McDonald
rejoining the band. However, Fripp did not want to tour as he felt that the "world was coming to an end
". He was, in any case, becoming discouraged by both the working relationships in the band and by the realities of high-profile rock band activity, which he increasingly saw as overblown and detrimental to both musicians and audience. Two months before the release of Red, Fripp announced that King Crimson had "ceased to exist" and was "completely over for ever and ever", The group formally disbanded on 25 September 1974. Much later on, it was revealed that Fripp had attempted to interest his managers in a Fripp-free version of King Crimson (consisting of Wetton, Bruford and McDonald) but had been turned down.
, documenting this version of King Crimson's final tour of the United States, was released in 1975 to critical acclaim, reviewers calling it "a must" for fans of the band and "insanity you're better off having". Technical issues with some of the original tapes rendered some of David Cross' violin parts inaudible when mixed in 1974, so Roxy Music
’s Eddie Jobson
was brought in to provide studio overdubs of violin and keyboards. Further edits were also necessary to allow for the time limitations of a single vinyl album. The album was reissued with two extra tracks, “Fracture” and “Starless”, in 2005.
in favour of a project that was more artistically and commercially ambitious. At the time, he had no intention of reforming King Crimson. However, his first step was to contact Bill Bruford and ask whether he wanted to join a new band, to which Bruford agreed. Fripp then contacted guitarist and singer Adrian Belew
(ex-David Bowie
/Frank Zappa
), whom he had met when Belew's band Gaga had supported The League of Gentlemen
. Belew was, at the time, a major collaborator with Talking Heads
both on record and on tour. Fripp had never been in a band with another guitarist before, other than his stint in Peter Gabriel's 1977 touring band, so the decision to seek a second guitarist was indicative of Fripp's desire to create a sound unlike any of his previous work. Belew (who agreed to join the new band following his tour commitments with Talking Heads
) would also become the band’s lyricist.
Having decided against selecting Bruford’s colleague Jeff Berlin
as bass player (on the grounds that his playing style was "too busy"), Fripp and Bruford resigned themselves to a long search and began auditioning scores of applicants in New York. On the third day, Fripp absented himself from the auditions after hearing about three musicians and returned several hours later accompanied by Tony Levin
, who got the job after playing a single chorus of "Red". Fripp later confessed that, had he initially known that Levin was available and interested, he would have selected him as first-choice bass player without auditions. In addition to his bass-playing contributions, Levin introduced the band to the use of the Chapman Stick
, a ten-string polyphonic two-handed tapping
instrument of the guitar family that had both a bass and treble range and that Levin played in an "utterly original style".
Fripp named the new quartet Discipline, and the band flew to England to rehearse and write. They made their live debut at Moles Club in Bath on 30 April 1981 and went on to tour the UK, supported by The Lounge Lizards
. By October 1981, the four members of Discipline had made the collective decision to ditch their original name and to reactivate and use the name of King Crimson.
The new version of King Crimson bore some resemblance to New Wave music
, which can be attributed in part to the work of both Belew and Fripp with Talking Heads
and David Bowie
, Levin's work with Peter Gabriel
, and Fripp's work on Exposure
and with The League of Gentlemen
. With this new band, described by J. D. Considine
in The New Rolling Stone Album Guide as having a "jaw-dropping technique" of "knottily rhythmic, harmonically demanding workouts", Fripp intended to create the sound of a "rock gamelan
", with an interlocking rhythmic quality to the paired guitars that he found similar to Indonesia
n gamelan ensembles. Fripp concentrated on playing complex picked arpeggios while Belew provided a striking arsenal of guitar sounds (including animal and insect noises, backward envelopes, industrial textures and demented lead guitar screams) utilising a broad range of electronic effects and unorthodox playing styles. Within the rhythm section, Levin brought elements of contemporary urban styles to the basslines, while Bruford experimented, at Fripp’s behest, with a cymbal-free drumkit. As with previous incarnations of the band, the new King Crimson line-up also embraced new technology that in turn informed the music – in this case the Roland guitar synthesiser, the Chapman Stick
and the Simmons electronic drumkit
. Although King Crimson’s trademark Mellotrons were no longer present, Fripp’s rich and overdriven lead guitar breaks provided a link to the past, with the new band also having turned in animated versions of "Red" and "Larks’ Tongues in Aspic, Part 2" during the original Discipline tour.
The first album by the new line-up was 1981’s Discipline, an immediate benchmark for the new sound and still considered to be one of the band’s finest records. The songs were short and snappy by King Crimson standards, with Belew’s pop sense and quirky lyrical approach a surprising contrast to previous Crimson grandeur. The music incorporated additional influences including post-punk, latterday funk, go-go and African-styled polyrhythms. While the band’s previous taste for improvisation was now tightly reined in, one of the album’s two instrumentals (the serene "The Sheltering Sky") had emerged unplanned out of group rehearsals. The noisy, half-spoken/half-shouted "Indiscipline" had been partially written in order to give Bruford a chance to escape from the strict rhythmic demands of the rest of the album and to play against the beat in any way that he could.
, which was both the first King Crimson album to have been recorded with the same band line-up as the album preceding it and the first not to have been produced by a member of the group. The album had a loosely-linked theme of the beat generation
and its writings, reflected in song titles such as "Neal and Jack and Me" (inspired by Neal Cassady
and Jack Kerouac
), "The Howler" (inspired by Allan Ginsberg’s “Howl”) and "Sartori in Tangier" (inspired by Paul Bowles
). Fripp had asked Belew to read Keroauc's novel On the Road
. for inspiration, and the album was peppered with themes of travel, disorientation and loneliness. While the record was a noticeably poppier version of the Discipline template (and contained the limpid ballads "Heartbeat" and "Two Hands", the latter with lyrics by Belew’s wife Margaret), it also featured the harsh, atonal and entirely improvised “Requiem”, which was more reminiscent of the left-field work of King Crimson circa Starless And Bible Black.
The recording process of Beat was fraught, with Belew suffering high stress levels over his duties as frontman and main songwriter. On one occasion, he clashed with Fripp and ordered him out of the studio. Fripp would later sardonically comment “So much for my being the leader of King Crimson”. The band's immediate differences were resolved and King Crimson toured again, followed by a recuperative time-out during which Belew recorded a solo album.
in 1984, the band found the compositional process hard and this time had difficulty reconciling the disparate musical ideas of the four members. They ultimately opted for a "two-sided" album consisting of "the left side"—four of the band's poppier songs and a melodical instrumental—and a "right side" of experimental material that ranged from extended and atonal improvisations in the tradition of the mid-70s band to a third tightly-structured episode in the "Larks' Tongues in Aspic" sequence. The "left side" songs had a loose lyrical theme—this time the workings of the brain (from dysfunction to dream), and its impact on life. The "right side" had more of a preoccupation with technological society, from the lengthy instrumental "Industry" to the sprechstimme piece “Dig Me” (sung from the viewpoint of a scrapped automobile
) and saw the band experimenting with more mechanistic sounds. The 2001 CD remaster of the album added "the other side", a collection of remixes and improvisation outtakes plus Levin’s tongue-in-cheek vocal piece "The King Crimson Barbershop".
The last concert of the Three Of A Perfect Pair tour, which was also the last concert played by the 1980s line-up, was recorded at the Spectrum club in Montreal
and subsequently released in 1998 as the live album Absent Lovers: Live in Montreal
. Immediately after this concert, Fripp dissolved the band for the second time, having become dissatisfied with its working methods. Bruford and Belew were to express some frustration over this (with the latter recalling that the first he had heard of the split was when he read about it in Musician magazine). Despite these circumstances, the musicians remained on fairly amicable terms. Belew would later refer to the band "taking a break" that ultimately lasted for ten years.
Vrooom
in the same year. This revealed the new King Crimson sound, which featured elements of the interlocking guitars on Discipline and the heavy rock feel of Red, but also involved a greater use of ambient electronic sound and ideas from industrial music. In contrast, many of the actual songs – mostly written or finalised by Belew – displayed stronger elements of 1960s pop than before – in particular, a Beatles
influence (although Bruford would also refer to the band as sounding like "a dissonant Shadows on steroids"). As with previous line-ups, new technology was used for, and informed, the music. In this case, the technology was MIDI, used extensively by Fripp, Belew and Gunn, to which Gunn would add the Warr Guitar
(a tapping guitar instrument with which he would replace his Chapman Stick
after VROOOM).
The apparent twinning of instruments was, in fact, used less than initially suggested. Using Soundscapes
(the greatly expanded digital successor to Frippertronics
) Fripp's guitar took on more of a textural and ambient role in many pieces. Gunn’s Stick and Warr Guitar playing, rather than staying in the bass register with Levin, covered a proportion of the guitar arpeggios and functioned as another lead instrument (as well as producing experimental and distorted sounds and acting as a MIDI trigger). The main use of twinned instrumentation was in the drumming. Bruford initially took on a more exploratory role over Mastelotto’s steady beat, but this soon shifted toward a more equitable sharing of percussive roles.
The revived band made its concert debut in Buenos Aires in 1995. The concert was recorded for the live album B'Boom: Live in Argentina
, which was released in August of the same year). In addition to a large body of new material, the band played three mid-70s pieces ("Red", "Larks’ Tongues In Aspic Part 2" and "The Talking Drum") and six songs from the 1980s repertoire, predominantly from Discipline.
in April 1995. Containing revised versions of most of the tracks on Vrooom, Thrak was described by reviewers as having "jazz-scented rock structures, characterised by noisy, angular, exquisite guitar interplay" and an "athletic, ever-inventive rhythm section", whilst being in tune with the sound of alternative rock musicians in the mid-1990s. Examples of the band’s efforts to integrate their multiple elements could be heard on the complex post-prog songs “Dinosaur” and “Sex Sleep Eat Drink Dream” as well as the more straightforward “One Time” and the funk-pop inspired “People”. Instrumentally, the album featured a couple of clear descendants of the driving “Red” (“VROOOM “ and “VROOOM VROOOM”), the drum duet “B’Boom”, the savagely displaced and rhythmic “THRAK” and a couple of brief solo Soundscapes from Fripp. The album also featured the brief return of Mellotron to the band’s sonic palette.
During 1995 and 1996 King Crimson continued to tour. In 1996, the band released the challenging avantgarde live album Thrakattak
, which consisted entirely of concert improvisations from the midsection of performances of "THRAK", digitally combined into an hour-long extended improvisation. A more conventional live recording from the period was later made available on the 2001 double CD release Vrooom Vrooom
, as was a 1995 concert on the 2003 Déjà Vrooom
DVD.
Although musically exciting, the Double Trio was expensive and cumbersome to run, which in turn led to insecurity. In mid-1997, the band gathered for rehearsals in Nashville that came to a compositional impasse in which none of the generated material appeared to satisfy Fripp. At this point, the friction between Fripp and a particularly exasperated Bruford effectively ended the latter’s time as a King Crimson member. Bruford would later comment "by now, Robert and I couldn't even agree where to have dinner. And if you can't agree that, you sure as heck can't play together." This, plus the lack of workable material and coherent group ideas, could have broken the band up altogether. Instead, the six members opted for an alternative solution – the ProjeKcts.
. This enabled the group to continue developing musical ideas and searching for Crimson's next direction without the practical difficulty and expense of convening all six members in one place at once. As with previous King Crimson endeavours, the ProjeKcts embraced new technology – in this case, Mastelotto's electronic drum loop devices, Trey Gunn’s MIDI-triggered "talkbox" and the new electronic Roland V-Drums
played by both Mastelotto and Belew. (Bruford had declined to play the V-drums despite Fripp’s request). Various King Crimson members have continued to create new ProjeKcts up until the present day, as and where necessary (and to cover recent hiatuses in main group activity).
The first four ProjeKcts played live in the US, Japan and the UK during 1998 and 1999 and released a number of recordings that were in many respects similar to the Thrakattak album, demonstrating a high degree of free improvisation
. These have been collectively described by music critic Considine
as "frequently astonishing" but also as lacking in melody
, and thus too difficult for the casual listener.
and others. Levin’s session career commitments – mostly to Peter Gabriel
and Seal
– were also obstructing future King Crimson activity. Fortunately, Levin's lack of availability suited Belew’s preference for working with a smaller unit following the logistical challenges of the Double Trio, and it was decided that Levin could withdraw amicably from the band for the moment. (Fripp stated that he still considered Levin to be a King Crimson member, albeit for now an inactive “fifth member”.)
The remaining four active members of King Crimson – Belew, Fripp, Gunn, and Mastelotto – continued with the band, sometimes referring to themselves as the “Double Duo” in a tongue-in-cheek reference to the previous line-up. Despite featuring two-thirds of the previous band’s personnel (and no new members), this incarnation of the band would be strongly distinct from the Double Trio and was effectively a different, rather than reduced, line-up. The altered membership and the experience of the ProjeKcts led to changes in role. Gunn began to concentrate on the bass register for his Warr Guitar playing, and added work on the baritone guitar
and Ashbory silicone-string bass guitar
. Mastellotto made a much greater use of electronics. Once again, new technology was employed (the electronic V-Drums and rhythm-loop machines, which had been used for the ProjeKCts), while Belew took the additional step of entirely embracing Fripp’s New Standard Tuning
on guitar.
, in Adrian Belew’s basement and garage near Nashville. The results were released in 2000 and proved to be the band’s most hard-rocking album to date. All of the pieces were metallic and harsh in sound, similar to the work of contemporary alternative metal
bands such as Tool
, with a distinct electronic texture, a heavy, processed drum sound from Mastelotto, and a different take on the interlocked guitar sound that the band had used since the 1980s. With the exception of a parodic industrial blues, sung by Belew through a voice changer, under the pseudonym of “Hooter J. Johnson”, the songs were unrelentingly complex and challenging to the listener, with plenty of rhythmic displacement to add to the harsh textures. The album also contained a lengthy fourth instalment of the “Larks’ Tongues In Aspic” series and another piece, “FraKCtured”, which effectively rewrote the 1973 piece “Fracture”. Fripp argued that the original “Fracture” had been written for and interpreted by a specific group of musicians, and that in order to pursue a similar theme in 2000 it had been necessary to rewrite the music in accordance with the skills and personalities of the current line-up. This explanation, however, did not protect the album from criticism for apparently lacking new ideas.
Although the whole band contributed to arrangements, the basic material on The ConstruKction of Light
was almost entirely composed by Belew (songs) and Fripp (instrumentals). To avoid creative frustration, the band recorded a parallel album at the same time under the name of ProjeKct X
, called Heaven and Earth
. This second album was conceived and led by Mastelotto and Gunn (with Fripp and Belew playing subsidiary roles in the band) and was a further development of the polyrhythmic/dance music approach seen earlier in the ProjeKCts. The album’s title track was also included as a bonus track on The ConstruKCtion of Light. Like The ConstruKction of Light, Heaven and Earth was criticised for an apparent lack of new ideas.
King Crimson toured to support the records, releasing a live document of the results as the triple live album Heavy ConstruKction
. This showed the band constantly switching between the structured album pieces and ferocious ProjeKCt-style Soundscape-and-percussion improvisations. Among King Crimson's live engagements were shows opening for self-confessed Crimson disciples Tool
in 2001. At one of these, Tool’s lead singer Maynard James Keenan
joked onstage: "For me, being on stage with King Crimson is like Lenny Kravitz
playing with Led Zeppelin
, or Britney Spears
onstage with Debbie Gibson."
, which featured three new pieces. A version of “The Deception of the Thrush”, a ProjeKct track now regularly featuring in the live set, plus the new tracks “Dangerous Curves” and “Virtuous Circle” suggested that the band was heading back towards a broader dynamic including quieter, more textural work. In 2002, King Crimson released another EP Happy With What You Have to Be Happy With
. This featured eleven tracks (including a live version of “Larks’ Tongues In Aspic, Part IV”) and confirmed that the band were moving back towards greater diversity. Half of the tracks were brief processed vocal snippets sung by Belew, and the songs themselves varied between gamelan pop, Soundscapes and slightly parodic takes on heavy metal and blues.
, which Fripp described as "the culmination of three years of Crimsonising" and which was possibly the most self-referential album of the band’s career. The album incorporated reworked and/or retitled versions of “Deception of the Thrush” and four of the EP tracks, plus a 1997 Soundscape with added instrumentation and vocals, and also used lyrics from an Adrian Belew solo song (“All Her Love Is Mine”) as a linking theme across four songs. It did, however, confirm the band’s return to more diverse songwriting and instrumentation, with a greater reliance on space and Soundscapes and with Mastelotto using more ProjeKCt-style percussion textures. Songs such as “EleKtrik” fused 1970s, 1980s and 21st century Crimson styles, and the album ran the gamut from metal to ambient. Once again, the band toured to support the album, resulting in the 2003 live album EleKtrik: Live in Japan
, recorded in Tokyo.
In late November 2003, Trey Gunn
announced his departure from King Crimson. He would continue his active association with Mastelotto in projects such as TU
and KTU
, as well as leading his own band. Tony Levin was subsequently reinstalled as King Crimson’s bass player, reconvening with Fripp, Belew and Mastelotto for rehearsals in early 2004.
.jpg)
Following the early 2004 rehearsals, King Crimson was placed on hold for another three years, although the band did not formally split up. By this point, Fripp was continually reassessing King Crimson in view of his dislike of the music industry and what he saw as the unsympathetic side of touring. While this did not break up the band, it contributed to changes in approach. During the hiatus, ProjeKct Six (Fripp on guitar and Soundscapes, Belew on drums, bass and guitar) – played four shows in the north-eastern United States in 2006, opening for Porcupine Tree
(the band’s first new British member since 1972). Although best known as the drummer for Porcupine Tree
(a position he continues to hold alongside his King Crimson work), Harrison had a formidable reputation as one of the best session drummers in the music industry and had had a long career including work with Level 42
, The Lodge
, Jakko Jakszyk
, Sam Brown and innumerable others.
The new five-man line-up began rehearsals in spring 2008. In August of the same year, the band set out on a brief four-city tour in preparation for the group's 40th Anniversary in 2009. Live, the band revealed an increasingly drum-centric direction but no new material or any extended improvisations. However, many of the pieces from the back catalogue received striking new arrangements, most notably the renditions of "Neurotica," "Sleepless," and "Level Five", all of which were given percussion-heavy overhauls, presumably to highlight the return to the dual-drummer format.
On 20 August 2008, DGMLive issued a download-only release of the 7 August 2008 concert in Chicago. More rehearsals and shows had been intended for 2009, but these were cancelled following scheduling clashes with various members' other projects and developments with Fripp's own priorities.
s, as well as his attempts to settle his own financial debts and organise his personal life). During 2009 and 2010, Belew revealed in various interviews that he had discussed reactivating King Crimson with Fripp but that the band was "on leave right now for an indeterminate amount of time..." In June 2010, Belew suggested reuniting the 1980s King Crimson line-up of himself, Fripp, Tony Levin and Bill Bruford for a 30th anniversary tour (while also stating that this did not constitute a rejection of Mastelotto or Harrison as current King Crimson drummers).). The reunion idea was politely turned down by Bruford and Fripp, with the former commenting that "it’s precisely because I loved the '80s band so much that I would be highly unlikely to try to recreate the same thing, a mission I fear destined to failure." while the latter pleaded commitment to other activities (using the expression "rather than saying no, I can't say yes") and commented that he would "rather spend his energies toward new (King Crimson) music, although not in the near future."
On December 5, 2010, Fripp wrote a diary entry on his DGM website outlining his current stage of involvement in the music industry. The diary entry suggested that the King Crimson "switch" had been set to "off" and detailed a number of reasons why he was not currently interested in performing or writing with the band. In spite of this, activity related to the band continues. A separate band based around Jakko Jakszyk
and King Crimson alumni Robert Fripp
and Mel Collins
(who played last with King Crimson on Red
) was announced in 2011 as being called "A King Crimson ProjeKct". Fripp has also referred to it as "P7". An album A Scarcity of Miracles
features these three musicians, along with other Crimson alumni Tony Levin and Gavin Harrison.
(fronted by Jakko Jakszyk
and featuring Ian McDonald
, Mel Collins
, Peter Giles and Michael Giles
– the latter later replaced by Ian Wallace
) toured and played material from the band's 1960s and 1970s catalogue.
In September 2008, a line-up called Crimson Project with Adrian Belew, Tony Levin, Pat Mastelotto, Eddie Jobson
and Eric Slick (from the Adrian Belew Power Trio) played a short set at a Russian festival.
and psychedelic rock
movements. The band played Donovan
's "Get Thy Bearings" in concert, and were known to play The Beatles
' "Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds
" in their rehearsals. However, for their own compositions, King Crimson (unlike the rock bands that had come before them) largely stripped away the blues
-based foundations of rock music and replaced them with influences derived from classical
composers. The first incarnation of King Crimson played the Mars section of Gustav Holst
's suite The Planets
as a regular part of their live set and Fripp has frequently cited the influence of Béla Bartók
. As a result of this influence, In the Court of the Crimson King
is frequently viewed as the nominal starting point of the symphonic rock
or progressive rock
movements. From its earliest years King Crimson also initially displayed strong jazz
influences, most obviously on its signature track "21st Century Schizoid Man
". The band also drew on English folk music
for compositions such as "Moonchild
" and "I Talk to the Wind
".
The 1981 reunion of the band brought in even more elements, displaying the influence of gamelan
music and of late 20th century classical composers such as Philip Glass
, Steve Reich
, and Terry Riley
. For its 1994 reunion, King Crimson reassessed both the mid-1970s and 1980s approaches in the light of new technology, intervening music forms such as grunge
, and further developments in industrial music
, as well as expanding the band's ambient textural content via Fripp's Soundscapes looping approach.
and studio recordings from the beginning, some of which has been embedded into loosely-composed pieces such as "Moonchild
" or "THRaK". Most of the band's performances over the years have included at least one stand-alone improvisation where the band simply started playing and took the music wherever it went, sometimes including passages of restrained silence, as with Bill Bruford's contribution to the improvised "Trio". The earliest example of an unambiguously improvising King Crimson on record is the spacious, oft-criticised extended coda of "Moonchild" from In the Court of the Crimson King.
Rather than using the standard jazz or blues "jamming
" format for improvisation (in which one soloist at a time takes centre stage while the rest of the band lies back and plays along with established rhythm and chord changes), King Crimson improvisation is a group affair in which each member of the band is able to make creative decisions and contributions as the music is being played. Individual soloing is largely eschewed; each musician is to listen to each other and to the group sound, to be able to react creatively within the group dynamic. A slightly similar method of continuous improvisation ("everybody solos and nobody solos") was initially used by King Crimson's jazz-fusion contemporaries Weather Report
. Fripp has used the metaphor of "white magic
" to describe this process, in particular when the method works particularly well.
Similarly, King Crimson's improvised music is rarely jazz or blues-based, and varies so much in sound that the band has been able to release several albums consisting entirely of improvised music, such as the Thrakattak album. Occasionally, particular improvised pieces will be recalled and reworked in different forms at different shows, becoming more and more refined and eventually appearing on official studio
releases (the most recent example being "Power to Believe III", which originally existed as the stage improvisation "Deception of the Thrush", a piece played onstage for a long time before appearing on record).
, Gordon Haskell
and Mel Collins
). Trey Gunn
, who played with the group between 1994 and 2003, has stated that "King Crimson is Robert’s vision. Period."
These musicians were part of the most recent proper King Crimson formation, which went on hiatus in 2009, but only Fripp is listed as a formal part of the latest ProjeKct – Jakszyk/Fripp/Collins, featuring former 21st Century Schizoid Band
frontman Jakko Jakszyk
(vocals, guitars, keyboards), early-1970s King Crimson/21st Century Schizoid Band
saxophonist and flautist Mel Collins
, and Fripp on guitar and Soundscapes (Levin and Harrison perform as the guest rhythm section). Historically, absence from a ProjeKct has not precluded a musician from continued participation in the next proper formation of King Crimson, although a ProjeKCt member or two typically drops off before the next formal King Crimson line-up is announced. Therefore it is, at current, unknown as to who will be in King Crimson if/when they regroup, and whether it will be a continuation of the last known King Crimson lineup or the current ProjeKct.
DGM has announced details of the first three reissues in the revamping of the King Crimson back catalogue, to be released in September and October 2009 as CD/DVDA editions. Steven Wilson
of Porcupine Tree
has been working on these over the past year, restoring the multi-track tapes from the best possible sources, remixing the albums into 5.1 surround sound, mixing unreleased tracks and alternate takes from the master tapes for the first time, and in some cases also creating new stereo mixes that enhance the sonics of the originals significantly. All of this work has been personally overseen by Robert Fripp, who also took part in the stereo remixing. The first three titles are Red, In the Court of the Crimson King (released as close to the exact 40th anniversary of its original release as possible), and Lizard. October 2010 saw reissues of In the Wake of Poseidon and Islands and October 2011 saw reissues of Starless and Bible Black and Discipline.
Further reissues in the works include THRAK
, with engineering by Jakko Jakszyk, and Larks' Tongues in Aspic
.
Progressive rock
Progressive rock is a subgenre of rock music that developed in the late 1960s and early 1970s as part of a "mostly British attempt to elevate rock music to new levels of artistic credibility." John Covach, in Contemporary Music Review, says that many thought it would not just "succeed the pop of...
group, the band have incorporated diverse influences and instrumentation during their history (including jazz
Jazz
Jazz is a musical style that originated at the beginning of the 20th century in African American communities in the Southern United States. It was born out of a mix of African and European music traditions. From its early development until the present, jazz has incorporated music from 19th and 20th...
and folk music
Folk music
Folk music is an English term encompassing both traditional folk music and contemporary folk music. The term originated in the 19th century. Traditional folk music has been defined in several ways: as music transmitted by mouth, as music of the lower classes, and as music with unknown composers....
, classical and experimental music
Experimental music
Experimental music refers, in the English-language literature, to a compositional tradition which arose in the mid-20th century, applied particularly in North America to music composed in such a way that its outcome is unforeseeable. Its most famous and influential exponent was John Cage...
, psychedelic rock
Psychedelic rock
Psychedelic rock is a style of rock music that is inspired or influenced by psychedelic culture and attempts to replicate and enhance the mind-altering experiences of psychedelic drugs. It emerged during the mid 1960s among folk rock and blues rock bands in United States and the United Kingdom...
, hard rock
Hard rock
Hard rock is a loosely defined genre of rock music which has its earliest roots in mid-1960s garage rock, blues rock and psychedelic rock...
and heavy metal
Heavy metal music
Heavy metal is a genre of rock music that developed in the late 1960s and early 1970s, largely in the Midlands of the United Kingdom and the United States...
, new wave
New Wave music
New Wave is a subgenre of :rock music that emerged in the mid to late 1970s alongside punk rock. The term at first generally was synonymous with punk rock before being considered a genre in its own right that incorporated aspects of electronic and experimental music, mod subculture, disco and 1960s...
, gamelan
Gamelan
A gamelan is a musical ensemble from Indonesia, typically from the islands of Bali or Java, featuring a variety of instruments such as metallophones, xylophones, drums and gongs; bamboo flutes, bowed and plucked strings. Vocalists may also be included....
, electronica
Electronica
Electronica includes a wide range of contemporary electronic music designed for a wide range of uses, including foreground listening, some forms of dancing, and background music for other activities; however, unlike electronic dance music, it is not specifically made for dancing...
and drum and bass
Drum and bass
Drum and bass is a type of electronic music which emerged in the late 1980s. The genre is characterized by fast breakbeats , with heavy bass and sub-bass lines...
). They have been influential on many contemporary musical artists and have gained a large cult following
Cult following
A cult following is a group of fans who are highly dedicated to a specific area of pop culture. A film, book, band, or video game, among other things, will be said to have a cult following when it has a small but very passionate fan base...
, despite garnering little radio or music video airplay.
Though originating in England, King Crimson have had a mixture of English and American personnel since 1981. The band's line-up (centred on guitarist Robert Fripp
Robert Fripp
Robert Fripp is an English guitarist, composer and record producer. He was ranked 42nd on Rolling Stone magazine's 2003 list of the "100 Greatest Guitarists of All Time" and #47 on Gibson.com’s "Top 50 Guitarists of All Time". Among rock guitarists, Fripp is a master of crosspicking, a technique...
) has persistently altered throughout their existence, with eighteen musicians and two lyricists passing through the ranks; though a greater degree of stability was achieved later in their history, with Adrian Belew
Adrian Belew
Adrian Belew is an American guitarist, singer, songwriter, multi-instrumentalist and record producer...
having been a consistent member since 1981.
The debut line-up of the band was influential but short-lived, lasting for just over one year. Between 1970 and 1971, King Crimson were an unstable band, with many personnel changes and disjunctions between studio and live sound as they explored elements of jazz, funk
Funk
Funk is a music genre that originated in the mid-late 1960s when African American musicians blended soul music, jazz and R&B into a rhythmic, danceable new form of music. Funk de-emphasizes melody and harmony and brings a strong rhythmic groove of electric bass and drums to the foreground...
and classical chamber music. By 1972 the band had a more stable line-up and developed an improvisational sound
Free improvisation
Free improvisation or free music is improvised music without any rules beyond the logic or inclination of the musician involved. The term can refer to both a technique and as a recognizable genre in its own right....
mingling hard rock, contemporary classical music
Classical music
Classical music is the art music produced in, or rooted in, the traditions of Western liturgical and secular music, encompassing a broad period from roughly the 11th century to present times...
, free jazz
Free jazz
Free jazz is an approach to jazz music that was first developed in the 1950s and 1960s. Though the music produced by free jazz pioneers varied widely, the common feature was a dissatisfaction with the limitations of bebop, hard bop, and modal jazz, which had developed in the 1940s and 1950s...
and jazz fusion
Jazz fusion
Jazz fusion is a musical fusion genre that developed from mixing funk and R&B rhythms and the amplification and electronic effects of rock, complex time signatures derived from non-Western music and extended, typically instrumental compositions with a jazz approach to lengthy group improvisations,...
before breaking up in 1974. They re-formed with a new line-up in 1981 for three years (this time influenced by new wave and gamelan music) before breaking up again for around a decade. Since reforming for the second time (in 1994), King Crimson have blended aspects of their 1980s and 1970s sound with influences from more recent musical genres such as industrial rock
Industrial rock
Industrial rock is a musical genre that fuses industrial music and specific rock subgenres. Industrial rock spawned industrial metal, with which it is often confused...
and grunge
Grunge
Grunge is a subgenre of alternative rock that emerged during the mid-1980s in the American state of Washington, particularly in the Seattle area. Inspired by hardcore punk, heavy metal, and indie rock, grunge is generally characterized by heavily distorted electric guitars, contrasting song...
. The band’s efforts to blend additional elements into their music have continued into the 21st century, with more recent developments including drum and bass-styled rhythm loops and extensive use of MIDI and guitar synthesis.
King Crimson's existence has been characterised by regular periods of hiatus initiated by Robert Fripp, and their current status is ambiguous. Despite online diary posts from Fripp suggesting that he does not feel a powerful desire to work within the King Crimson context, he and other members continue to work within the context of related "ProjeKCts" (an ongoing succession of spin-offs from the main band initiated in 1997, of which the latest example is the song-based "Jakszyk, Fripp and Collins").
History
In August 1967, brothers Michael GilesMichael Giles
Michael Giles is an English drummer, best known as a co-founder of King Crimson in 1969...
(drums) and Peter Giles (bass) who had been professional musicians in various jobbing bands since their mid-teens in Dorset
Dorset
Dorset , is a county in South West England on the English Channel coast. The county town is Dorchester which is situated in the south. The Hampshire towns of Bournemouth and Christchurch joined the county with the reorganisation of local government in 1974...
, advertised for a singing organist to join their new project. Fellow Dorset musician Robert Fripp
Robert Fripp
Robert Fripp is an English guitarist, composer and record producer. He was ranked 42nd on Rolling Stone magazine's 2003 list of the "100 Greatest Guitarists of All Time" and #47 on Gibson.com’s "Top 50 Guitarists of All Time". Among rock guitarists, Fripp is a master of crosspicking, a technique...
– a guitarist who did not sing – responded and the trio formed the band Giles, Giles and Fripp
Giles, Giles and Fripp
Giles, Giles and Fripp were an English late 1960s band, featuring brothers Michael Giles on drums and vocals, Peter Giles on bass guitar and vocals, and Robert Fripp on guitar.-Career:...
.
Based on a format of eccentric pop songs and complex instrumentals, the band recorded several unsuccessful singles and one album, The Cheerful Insanity of Giles, Giles and Fripp. The band hovered on the edge of success, with several radio sessions and a television appearance, but never scored the hit that would have been crucial for a commercial breakthrough. The album was no more of a success than the singles, and was even disparaged by Keith Moon
Keith Moon
Keith John Moon was an English musician, best known for being the drummer of the English rock group The Who. He gained acclaim for his exuberant and innovative drumming style, and notoriety for his eccentric and often self-destructive behaviour, earning him the nickname "Moon the Loon". Moon...
of The Who
The Who
The Who are an English rock band formed in 1964 by Roger Daltrey , Pete Townshend , John Entwistle and Keith Moon . They became known for energetic live performances which often included instrument destruction...
in a magazine review. Attempting to expand their sound, Giles, Giles and Fripp
Giles, Giles and Fripp
Giles, Giles and Fripp were an English late 1960s band, featuring brothers Michael Giles on drums and vocals, Peter Giles on bass guitar and vocals, and Robert Fripp on guitar.-Career:...
then recruited the multi-instrumentalist Ian McDonald
Ian McDonald (musician)
Ian McDonald is an English multi-instrumental musician, best known as a founding member of progressive rock group King Crimson, formed in 1969, and of the hard rock band Foreigner in 1976. He is well-known as a rock session musician, predominantly as a saxophonist...
on keyboards, reeds and woodwinds. McDonald brought along his then-girlfriend, the former Fairport Convention
Fairport Convention
Fairport Convention are an English folk rock and later electric folk band, formed in 1967 who are still recording and touring today. They are widely regarded as the most important single group in the English folk rock movement...
singer Judy Dyble
Judy Dyble
Judith Aileen Dyble, better known as Judy Dyble , is an award winning British singer/songwriter most notable for being one of the vocalists with, and founder members of, Fairport Convention and Trader Horne; in between these she was very briefly with Giles, Giles and Fripp, which evolved into...
, whose tenure with the group was brief and ended at the same time as her romantic split with McDonald (she would later resurface in Trader Horne). More significantly, McDonald brought in lyricist, roadie and art strategist Peter Sinfield
Peter Sinfield
Peter John Sinfield is an English poet, lyricist and artist, most famously known as the lyricist and co-founding member of early incarnations of King Crimson, whose debut album In the Court of the Crimson King has been regarded as one of the most influential progressive rock albums ever...
, with whom he had been writing songs – a partnership initiated when McDonald had said to Sinfield, regarding his 1968 band Creation, "Peter, I have to tell you that your band is hopeless, but you write some great words. Would you like to get together on a couple of songs?" One of the first songs McDonald and Sinfield wrote together was "The Court of the Crimson King
The Court of the Crimson King
"The Court of the Crimson King" is the fifth and final track from the British progressive rock band King Crimson's debut album, In the Court of the Crimson King. It was also released as a single. It reached #80 on the US charts, and is the band's only charting single in the United...
".
Fripp, meanwhile, had seen the band 1-2-3 (later known as Clouds
Clouds (60s rock band)
Clouds were a 1960s Scottish rock band that disbanded in October 1971. The band consisted of Ian Ellis , Harry Hughes and Billy Ritchie .- Early days: The Premiers :...
) at the Marquee
Marquee Club
The Marquee was a music club first located at 165 Oxford Street, London, England when it opened in 1958 with a range of jazz and skiffle acts.It was also the location of the first ever live performance by The Rolling Stones on 12 July 1962....
. This band would later inspire some of Crimson's penchant for classical melodies and jazz-like improvisation. Feeling that he no longer wished to pursue Peter Giles' more whimsical pop style, Fripp recommended his friend Greg Lake
Greg Lake
Gregory Stuart "Greg" Lake is an English musician, songwriter and producer, best known as a vocalist and bassist of King Crimson, and the bassist, guitarist, vocalist, and lyricist of Emerson, Lake & Palmer.-1960s: King Crimson:...
, a singer and guitarist, for recruitment into the band, with the suggestion that Lake should replace either him or Peter Giles. Although Peter Giles would later sardonically describe this as one of Fripp's "cute political moves", he himself had become disillusioned with Giles, Giles and Fripp's failure to break through, and stepped down to be replaced by Lake as the band's bass player, singer and frontman. At this point, the band morphed into what would become King Crimson.
King Crimson, line-up 1 (1968–1969)
The first incarnation of King Crimson were formed in London on 30 November 1968 and first rehearsed on 13 January 1969. The band name was coined by lyricist Peter SinfieldPeter Sinfield
Peter John Sinfield is an English poet, lyricist and artist, most famously known as the lyricist and co-founding member of early incarnations of King Crimson, whose debut album In the Court of the Crimson King has been regarded as one of the most influential progressive rock albums ever...
as a synonym for Beelzebub
Beelzebub
Beelzebub -Religious meaning:Ba‘al Zəbûb is variously understood to mean "lord of flies", or "lord of the dwelling". Originally the name of a Philistine god, Beelzebub is also identified in the New Testament as Satan, the "prince of the demons". In Arabic the name is retained as Ba‘al dhubaab /...
, prince of demons. According to Fripp, Beelzebub would be an anglicised
English language
English is a West Germanic language that arose in the Anglo-Saxon kingdoms of England and spread into what was to become south-east Scotland under the influence of the Anglian medieval kingdom of Northumbria...
form of the Arabic phrase "B'il Sabab", meaning "the man with an aim" – although it literally means "with a cause". At this point, Ian McDonald was King Crimson’s main composer, albeit with significant contributions from Lake and Fripp, while Sinfield not only wrote all the lyrics but designed and operated the band’s revolutionary stage lighting, and was therefore credited with "sounds and visions". McDonald suggested the new band purchase a Mellotron
Mellotron
The Mellotron is an electro-mechanical, polyphonic tape replay keyboard originally developed and built in Birmingham, England in the early 1960s. It superseded the Chamberlin Music Master, which was the world's first sample-playback keyboard intended for music...
(the first example of the band’s persistent involvement with music technology) and they began using it to create an orchestral rock sound, inspired by The Moody Blues
The Moody Blues
The Moody Blues are an English rock band. Among their innovations was a fusion with classical music, most notably in their 1967 album Days of Future Passed....
.
King Crimson made their live debut on 9 April 1969, and made a breakthrough by playing the free concert in Hyde Park, London
Hyde Park, London
Hyde Park is one of the largest parks in central London, United Kingdom, and one of the Royal Parks of London, famous for its Speakers' Corner.The park is divided in two by the Serpentine...
, staged by The Rolling Stones
The Rolling Stones
The Rolling Stones are an English rock band, formed in London in April 1962 by Brian Jones , Ian Stewart , Mick Jagger , and Keith Richards . Bassist Bill Wyman and drummer Charlie Watts completed the early line-up...
in July 1969 before 650,000 people.
In the Court of the Crimson King
The band's debut album, In the Court of the Crimson KingIn the Court of the Crimson King
In the Court of the Crimson King is the 1969 debut album by the British progressive rock group King Crimson. The album reached No. 5 on the British charts, and is certified gold in the United States....
, was released in October 1969 on Island Records
Island Records
Island Records is a record label that was founded by Chris Blackwell in Jamaica. It was based in the United Kingdom for many years and is now owned by Universal Music Group...
. Fripp would later describe it as having been "an instant smash" and "New York's
New York City
New York is the most populous city in the United States and the center of the New York Metropolitan Area, one of the most populous metropolitan areas in the world. New York exerts a significant impact upon global commerce, finance, media, art, fashion, research, technology, education, and...
acid
LSD
Lysergic acid diethylamide, abbreviated LSD or LSD-25, also known as lysergide and colloquially as acid, is a semisynthetic psychedelic drug of the ergoline family, well known for its psychological effects which can include altered thinking processes, closed and open eye visuals, synaesthesia, an...
album of 1970" (notwithstanding Fripp and Giles' claim that the band never used psychedelic drugs). The album received public compliments from Pete Townshend
Pete Townshend
Peter Dennis Blandford "Pete" Townshend is an English rock guitarist, vocalist, songwriter and author, known principally as the guitarist and songwriter for the rock group The Who, as well as for his own solo career...
, The Who
The Who
The Who are an English rock band formed in 1964 by Roger Daltrey , Pete Townshend , John Entwistle and Keith Moon . They became known for energetic live performances which often included instrument destruction...
's guitarist, who called the album "an uncanny masterpiece." The sound of In the Court of the Crimson King
In the Court of the Crimson King
In the Court of the Crimson King is the 1969 debut album by the British progressive rock group King Crimson. The album reached No. 5 on the British charts, and is certified gold in the United States....
(specifically the track, "21st Century Schizoid Man") has also been described as setting the antecedent for alternative rock
Alternative rock
Alternative rock is a genre of rock music and a term used to describe a diverse musical movement that emerged from the independent music underground of the 1980s and became widely popular by the 1990s...
and grunge
Grunge
Grunge is a subgenre of alternative rock that emerged during the mid-1980s in the American state of Washington, particularly in the Seattle area. Inspired by hardcore punk, heavy metal, and indie rock, grunge is generally characterized by heavily distorted electric guitars, contrasting song...
, whilst the softer tracks are described as having an "ethereal" and "almost sacred" feel. In contrast to the blues-based hard rock of the contemporary British and American scenes, King Crimson presented a more Europeanised approach that blended antiquity and modernity. The band's music drew on a wide range of influences provided by all five group members. These elements included romantic- and modernist-era classical music
Classical music
Classical music is the art music produced in, or rooted in, the traditions of Western liturgical and secular music, encompassing a broad period from roughly the 11th century to present times...
, the psychedelic rock spearheaded by Jimi Hendrix
Jimi Hendrix
James Marshall "Jimi" Hendrix was an American guitarist and singer-songwriter...
, folk
Folk music
Folk music is an English term encompassing both traditional folk music and contemporary folk music. The term originated in the 19th century. Traditional folk music has been defined in several ways: as music transmitted by mouth, as music of the lower classes, and as music with unknown composers....
, jazz
Jazz
Jazz is a musical style that originated at the beginning of the 20th century in African American communities in the Southern United States. It was born out of a mix of African and European music traditions. From its early development until the present, jazz has incorporated music from 19th and 20th...
, military music (partially inspired by McDonald’s stint as an army musician), ambient improvisation, Victoriana
Victoriana
Victoriana refers to items or material from the Victorian period , especially those particularly evocative of the design style and outlook of the time....
and British pop.
After playing shows in England, the band embarked on a tour of the United States, performing alongside many contemporary popular musicians and musical groups. Their first US show was performed at Goddard College, in Plainfield, Vermont. While their original sound astounded contemporary audiences and critics, creative tensions were already developing within the band. Michael Giles and Ian McDonald, still striving to cope with King Crimson’s rapid success and the realities of life on the road, became uneasy with the band’s direction. Although he was neither the dominant composer in the band nor the frontman, Fripp was very much the band’s driving force and spokesman, leading King Crimson into progressively darker and more intense musical areas. McDonald and Giles, now favouring a lighter and more romantic style of music, became increasingly uncomfortable with their position and resigned from the band during the California tour. In order to salvage what he saw as the most important elements of King Crimson, Fripp offered to resign himself, but McDonald and Giles declared that the band was “more (him) than them” and that they should therefore be the ones to leave.
The original line-up played their last show together in San Francisco at the Fillmore West
Fillmore West
The Fillmore West was an historic music venue in San Francisco, California made famous by concert promoter Bill Graham. Named after Graham's original "Fillmore" location at the intersection of Fillmore Street and Geary Boulevard, it stood at Market Street and South Van Ness Avenue and was formerly...
on 16 December 1969. Ian McDonald and Michael Giles then formally left King Crimson to pursue solo work, recording the semi-successful McDonald and Giles
McDonald and Giles
McDonald and Giles is an album of music released by British musicians Ian McDonald and Michael Giles in 1971. The album was first issued on Island Records in the U.K. and in the U.S. as Cotillion Records , a division of Atlantic Records. The album was recorded at Island Studios between May and...
studio album in 1970 before dissolving their partnership (McDonald would later resurface in Foreigner
Foreigner (band)
Foreigner is a British-American rock band, originally formed in 1976 by veteran English musicians Mick Jones and ex-King Crimson member Ian McDonald along with American vocalist Lou Gramm...
while Giles became a session drummer). Live recordings of the original King Crimson’s concerts were eventually released twenty-seven years later in 1996 as the double/quadruple live album Epitaph and in the King Crimson Collector's Club releases.
From the start of 1970 until mid-1971, King Crimson remained in a state of flux with fluctuating line-ups, thwarted tour plans and difficulties in finding a satisfactory musical direction. (This period has subsequently been referred to as the "interregnum" – a nickname implying that the "King" (King Crimson) was not properly in place during this time.) Greg Lake
Greg Lake
Gregory Stuart "Greg" Lake is an English musician, songwriter and producer, best known as a vocalist and bassist of King Crimson, and the bassist, guitarist, vocalist, and lyricist of Emerson, Lake & Palmer.-1960s: King Crimson:...
was the next member to leave, departing in early 1970 after being approached by Keith Emerson to join what would become Emerson, Lake & Palmer
Emerson, Lake & Palmer
Emerson, Lake & Palmer, also known as ELP, are an English progressive rock supergroup. They found success in the 1970s and sold over forty million albums and headlined large stadium concerts. The band consists of Keith Emerson , Greg Lake and Carl Palmer...
. This left Fripp as the only remaining musician in the band, taking on part of the keyboard-playing role in addition to guitar. To compensate, Sinfield increased his own creative role and began developing his interest in synthesisers for use on subsequent records.
In the Wake of Poseidon
The band's second album, In the Wake of PoseidonIn the Wake of Poseidon
In the Wake of Poseidon is the second album by the progressive rock group King Crimson. By the time this album was released, the band had already undergone their first change in line-up, however they still maintained much of the style of their first album, In the Court of the Crimson King.Greg Lake...
was recorded by a mixture of the remaining members (Fripp and Sinfield) and their former associates. Michael Giles returned to play drums on a session only basis, joined by Peter Giles on bass. At one point, the band considered hiring the then-unknown Elton John
Elton John
Sir Elton Hercules John, CBE, Hon DMus is an English rock singer-songwriter, composer, pianist and occasional actor...
(on spec) to be the album's singer, but decided against it. Instead (and in exchange for receiving King Crimson's PA equipment as payment), Lake agreed to sing on the band's developing second album In the Wake of Poseidon
In the Wake of Poseidon
In the Wake of Poseidon is the second album by the progressive rock group King Crimson. By the time this album was released, the band had already undergone their first change in line-up, however they still maintained much of the style of their first album, In the Court of the Crimson King.Greg Lake...
, covering all of the album’s vocal tracks except "Cadence And Cascade", which was sung by Fripp's old schoolfriend and teenage bandmate Gordon Haskell
Gordon Haskell
Gordon Haskell is a Pop, Rock & Blues music vocalist, songwriter, and bassist. He first gained recognition as a member of the British band Les Fleur de Lys. He sang on one of the songs of King Crimson's second album, then played bass and sang on their third album...
. Mel Collins (formerly of the band Cirkus) contributed saxophones and flute. Another key performer was jazz pianist Keith Tippett
Keith Tippett
Keith Tippett is a British jazz pianist and composer.Tippett, the son of a local police officer, went to Greenway Boys Secondary Modern school in Southmead, Bristol. He formed his first jazz band called The KT7 whilst still at school and they performed numbers popular at the time by The Temperance...
, who became an integral part of King Crimson's sound for the next few records. Although Fripp offered him full band membership, Tippett preferred to remain as a studio collaborator and performed live with the band only once. In the Wake of Poseidon was moderately well received on release, but was criticised as sounding very similar in both style and content to the band's debut album, to the point where it seemed like an imitation.
Lizard
With In the Wake of PoseidonIn the Wake of Poseidon
In the Wake of Poseidon is the second album by the progressive rock group King Crimson. By the time this album was released, the band had already undergone their first change in line-up, however they still maintained much of the style of their first album, In the Court of the Crimson King.Greg Lake...
on sale, Fripp and Sinfield had material and releases to promote, but no band to play them. In considerable desperation, Fripp persuaded Gordon Haskell to join permanently as singer and bass player and also recruited former Shy Limbs/Manfred Mann's Earth Band
Manfred Mann's Earth Band
Manfred Mann's Earth Band is a British progressive rock group formed in 1971 by Manfred Mann.-Formation:Having started in the 1960s with a British band that had such hits as "Do Wah Diddy Diddy" and "The Mighty Quinn", then moving on to Jazz Fusion with Manfred Mann's Chapter Three, Manfred's third...
drummer Andy McCulloch (another Dorset musician moving in the West London progressive rock circle). Mel Collins was also retained as a full band member. Both Haskell and McCulloch joined King Crimson in time to participate in the recording sessions for the band's third album, Lizard
Lizard (album)
Lizard is the third album by the British band King Crimson, released in 1970. It was the second recorded by a transitional line-up of the group that never had the opportunity to perform live, following In the Wake of Poseidon...
, but had no say in the writing of the material. Fripp and Sinfield, now effectively equal artistic partners, had written the entire album themselves and had also brought in a squad of jazz musicians to help record it – Keith Tippett, cornet player Marc Charig
Marc Charig
Mark Charig is a British trumpeter and cornetist.He was particularly active in the late 1960s and early 1970s, when he played in settings as diverse as Long John Baldry's group, Bluesology, Soft Machine, and Keith Tippett's group and his Centipede big band...
, trombonist Nick Evans and oboe player Robin Miller. Jon Anderson
Jon Anderson
Jon Anderson is an English singer-songwriter and musician best known as the former lead vocalist in the progressive rock band Yes...
of Yes
Yes (band)
Yes are an English rock band who achieved worldwide success with their progressive, art, and symphonic style of rock music. Regarded as one of the pioneers of the progressive genre, Yes are known for their lengthy songs, mystical lyrics, elaborate album art, and live stage sets...
was also brought in to perform vocals on one song ("Prince Rupert Awakes") which Fripp and Sinfield considered to be outside Haskell’s range and style. Lizard featured much stronger avant-garde jazz and chamber-classical influences than previous albums, as well as Sinfield’s upfront experiments with processing and distorting sound through the VCS3 synthesiser. It also featured Sinfield’s most complex set of allusive lyrics to date, including a coded song about the break-up of the Beatles, with almost the entire second side taken up by a predominantly instrumental chamber suite describing a mediaeval battle and its outcome.
Lizard has subsequently been described as being an "acquired taste": it was definitely not to the taste of the more rhythm-and-blues-oriented Haskell and McCulloch, who did not enjoy the sessions and rapidly became disillusioned. Haskell also realised that he would be playing material that he had no sympathy for, and that he would have no creative input into King Crimson for the foreseeable future. Just prior to the release of Lizard, Haskell quit the band acrimoniously, having refused to sing through distortion and electronic effects for live concerts. McCulloch quit immediately afterwards, later joining Arthur Brown
Arthur Brown (musician)
Arthur Brown is an English rock and roll musician best known for his flamboyant, theatrical style and significant influence on Alice Cooper, Peter Gabriel, Marilyn Manson, George Clinton, Kiss, King Diamond, and Bruce Dickinson, among others, and for his number one hit in the UK Singles Chart and...
's band and subsequently becoming the drummer for Greenslade
Greenslade
Greenslade is an English progressive rock band. It was originally formed in the autumn of 1972 with the following line-up:* Dave Greenslade - keyboards...
in 1972. Fripp and Sinfield were forced to return to the arduous process of auditioning new members.
King Crimson, line-up 2 (1971–1972)
The next King Crimson line-up featured Fripp, Sinfield and drummer Ian WallaceIan Wallace (drummer)
Ian Russell Wallace was a rock and jazz drummer, most visible as a member of progressive rock band, King Crimson from 1971 to 1972; but known best in the musical community with his contributions as a session musician on his drum kit.-Early years:Wallace formed his first band, The Jaguars, at...
(a former bandmate of Jon Anderson
Jon Anderson
Jon Anderson is an English singer-songwriter and musician best known as the former lead vocalist in the progressive rock band Yes...
). Auditionees for the role of singer included Bryan Ferry
Bryan Ferry
Bryan Ferry, CBE is an English singer, musician, and songwriter. Ferry came to public prominence in the early 1970s as lead vocalist and principal songwriter with the band Roxy Music, who enjoyed a highly successful career with three number one albums and ten singles entering the top ten charts in...
and the band's manager John Gaydon, but the post went to Raymond "Boz" Burrell
Boz Burrell
Raymond "Boz" Burrell was an English musician. Originally a vocalist, Burrell is best known for his bass playing and work with the rock bands King Crimson and Bad Company.-Career:...
, who’d previously worked with his own band Boz People and at one point had been tipped to replace Roger Daltrey
Roger Daltrey
Roger Harry Daltrey, CBE , is an English singer and actor, best known as the founder and lead singer of English rock band The Who. He has maintained a musical career as a solo artist and has also worked in the film industry, acting in a large number of films, theatre and television roles and also...
in The Who
The Who
The Who are an English rock band formed in 1964 by Roger Daltrey , Pete Townshend , John Entwistle and Keith Moon . They became known for energetic live performances which often included instrument destruction...
. Fripp approached bass player John Wetton
John Wetton
John Kenneth Wetton is an English bassist, guitarist, keyboardist, singer and songwriter. He was born in Willington, Derbyshire, and grew up in Bournemouth. He has been a professional musician since the late 1960s...
(ex Mogul Thrash
Mogul Thrash
Mogul Thrash was a progressive rock band from the United Kingdom active in the early 1970s.-Biography:British jazz-rock band Mogul Thrash evolved from James Litherland's Brotherhood, which in addition to guitarist Litherland also featured guitarist/reedist Michael Rosen , drummer Bill Harrison and...
) in mid-1971 to complete the line-up, but Wetton declined in order to accept a place in Family
Family (band)
Family were an English rock band that formed in late 1966 and disbanded in October 1973. Their style has been characterised as progressive rock, although their sound often explored other genres, incorporating elements of styles like as folk, psychedelia, acid, jazz fusion and rock and roll...
, although he kept in touch with Fripp. Rick Kemp
Rick Kemp
Rick Kemp is an English bass player, songwriter, vocalist and record producer, best known for his work with the pioneering electric folk band, Steeleye Span.-Projects:...
was eventually selected as the new bass player but turned the band down at the last minute. Once again faced with limited choices, Fripp and Wallace taught Boz to play the bass rather than start the search all over again. Although Boz had not played bass before, he had played enough occasional rhythm guitar to make learning the instrument easier.
In 1971, King Crimson undertook their first tour since 1969 with the new line-up. The concerts were well received, but the roots-based musical inclinations and rock-and-roll lifestyle favoured by Burrell, Collins and Wallace began to alienate the drug-free, more cerebral Fripp. He began to withdraw socially from his colleagues, creating tension that spread to the rest of the band, although King Crimson completed the tour intact.
Islands
Later in the year King Crimson recorded and released a new album, IslandsIslands (King Crimson album)
Islands is the fourth album by the British band King Crimson, released in 1971.The last King Crimson studio album before the group's trilogy of Larks' Tongues in Aspic, Starless and Bible Black and Red, it is also the last to feature the lyrics of Peter Sinfield and the last to feature the band's...
. The band's warmest-sounding record to date, it was strongly influenced by Miles Davis’s orchestral collaborations with Gil Evans and had a loose thematic connection with Homer
Homer
In the Western classical tradition Homer , is the author of the Iliad and the Odyssey, and is revered as the greatest ancient Greek epic poet. These epics lie at the beginning of the Western canon of literature, and have had an enormous influence on the history of literature.When he lived is...
’s Odyssey
Odyssey
The Odyssey is one of two major ancient Greek epic poems attributed to Homer. It is, in part, a sequel to the Iliad, the other work ascribed to Homer. The poem is fundamental to the modern Western canon, and is the second—the Iliad being the first—extant work of Western literature...
. It also showed signs of a stylistic divergence between Sinfield (who favoured the softer and more textural jazz-folk approach) and Fripp (who was drawn more towards the harsher instrumental style exemplified by the instrumental "Sailor’s Tale" with its dramatic Mellotron use and banjo-inspired guitar technique). Islands also featured the band’s one-and-only experiment with a string ensemble ("Prelude: Song of the Gulls") and the raunchy rhythm-and-blues-inspired "Ladies of the Road" – by far the closest representation of the band’s live style, and probably the only track that the whole band liked. A hint of trouble to come came when one (unnamed) member of the band allegedly described the more delicate and meditative parts of Islands as "airy-fairy shit".
Following the next tour, Fripp ousted Sinfield (with whom his relationship had deteriorated) claiming musical differences and a loss of faith in his partner’s ideas. (Sinfield would go on to release a solo album, Still, featuring all of the current and previous members of King Crimson aside from Fripp, and then reunited with Greg Lake by becoming the principal lyricist for Emerson, Lake & Palmer
Emerson, Lake & Palmer
Emerson, Lake & Palmer, also known as ELP, are an English progressive rock supergroup. They found success in the 1970s and sold over forty million albums and headlined large stadium concerts. The band consists of Keith Emerson , Greg Lake and Carl Palmer...
: many years later, he would achieve great success writing pop songs for Bucks Fizz
Bucks Fizz (band)
Bucks Fizz are an English pop group who achieved success in the 1980s, most notably for winning the 1981 Eurovision Song Contest with the song "Making Your Mind Up". The group was formed in January 1981 specifically for the contest and comprised four vocalists: Bobby G, Cheryl Baker, Mike Nolan and...
.) The remaining band broke up acrimoniously in rehearsals shortly afterwards, due to Fripp’s refusal to incorporate other members’ compositions into the band’s repertoire. (He later cited this as "quality control" and an attempt to ensure that King Crimson was performing the "right kind" of music.)
The band were persuaded to reform in order to fulfil their 1972 tour commitments, with the intention of disbanding afterwards. Recordings from this tour were later released as the Earthbound
Earthbound (King Crimson album)
Earthbound is a live album by the band King Crimson, released in 1972 as a budget record shortly after the line-up that recorded it had broken up...
live album, noted and criticised for its bootleg-level sound quality and a style that occasionally veered towards funk
Funk
Funk is a music genre that originated in the mid-late 1960s when African American musicians blended soul music, jazz and R&B into a rhythmic, danceable new form of music. Funk de-emphasizes melody and harmony and brings a strong rhythmic groove of electric bass and drums to the foreground...
, with scat singing
Scat singing
In vocal jazz, scat singing is vocal improvisation with wordless vocables, nonsense syllables or without words at all. Scat singing gives singers the ability to sing improvised melodies and rhythms, to create the equivalent of an instrumental solo using their voice.- Structure and syllable choice...
on the improvised pieces. This was a flagrant sign of the musical rift between Fripp and all three of the other members, the latter of whom were attempting to steer the band back towards a rootsier rhythm-and-blues style in open defiance of Fripp. Despite these problems, relationships across the band gradually improved during the tour to the point where Collins, Burrell and Wallace offered to continue with the band. However, Fripp had already decided to entirely restructure King Crimson with a new musical direction that he felt was entirely unsuited to the current band, and was already recruiting new members.
Having spent a long time being critically overshadowed by the preceding and subsequent line-ups of King Crimson, the Islands line-up of the band benefited from positive reappraisal in the mid-2000s following the release of several live archive releases (including the double live set Ladies of the Road and various King Crimson Collectors Club recordings) and reassessments by Fripp and other band members. Fripp would subsequently mend his damaged relationships with Wallace and Collins, although not with Burrell.
King Crimson, line-up 3 (mid-1972–1974)
The third major line-up of King Crimson was radically different from the previous two and the interregnum work, being both the first without saxophone or woodwind and the first to embrace active improvisation as a major musical element. Fripp’s first new recruit was the free-improvisingFree improvisation
Free improvisation or free music is improvised music without any rules beyond the logic or inclination of the musician involved. The term can refer to both a technique and as a recognizable genre in its own right....
percussionist Jamie Muir
Jamie Muir
Jamie Muir is a UK painter and former percussionist, best known for his work in King Crimson.-Biography:Muir attended Edinburgh College of Art during the 1960s and began playing jazz on trombone before settling on percussion....
, who had previously worked with Sunship and Derek Bailey. In the first of King Crimson’s “double drummer” line-ups, he was paired with former Yes
Yes (band)
Yes are an English rock band who achieved worldwide success with their progressive, art, and symphonic style of rock music. Regarded as one of the pioneers of the progressive genre, Yes are known for their lengthy songs, mystical lyrics, elaborate album art, and live stage sets...
drummer Bill Bruford
Bill Bruford
William Scott "Bill" Bruford is an English drummer, percussionist, composer, producer, and record label owner. He was the original drummer for the progressive rock group Yes, from 1968-1972. Bruford has performed for numerous popular acts since the early 1970s, including a stint as touring...
, who had chosen to leave the commercially successful Yes
Yes (band)
Yes are an English rock band who achieved worldwide success with their progressive, art, and symphonic style of rock music. Regarded as one of the pioneers of the progressive genre, Yes are known for their lengthy songs, mystical lyrics, elaborate album art, and live stage sets...
at the peak of their early career in favour of the comparatively unstable and unpredictable King Crimson. Fripp also finally secured John Wetton
John Wetton
John Kenneth Wetton is an English bassist, guitarist, keyboardist, singer and songwriter. He was born in Willington, Derbyshire, and grew up in Bournemouth. He has been a professional musician since the late 1960s...
as King Crimson’s singer and bass player, recruiting him directly from Family
Family (band)
Family were an English rock band that formed in late 1966 and disbanded in October 1973. Their style has been characterised as progressive rock, although their sound often explored other genres, incorporating elements of styles like as folk, psychedelia, acid, jazz fusion and rock and roll...
. The line-up was completed by David Cross
David Cross (musician)
David Cross is an electric violinist born in Turnchapel near Plymouth, England, best known for playing with progressive rock band King Crimson during the 1970s...
, a relatively unknown violinist (doubling on keyboards) whom Fripp had encountered through work with music colleges.
With Sinfield gone, the band recruited a new lyricist, Wetton's friend Richard Palmer-James
Richard Palmer-James
Richard Jeffrey Charles Palmer-James was lyricist for the progressive rock group King Crimson in the early 1970s....
(the former guitarist for Supertramp
Supertramp
Supertramp are a British rock band formed in 1969 under the name Daddy before renaming to Supertramp in early 1970. Though their music was initially categorised as progressive rock, they have since incorporated a combination of traditional rock and art rock into their music...
). Unlike Sinfield, Palmer-James played no part in artistic, visual or sonic direction. His sole contributions to King Crimson were his lyrics, sent by post to Wetton from his home in Hamburg.
Larks' Tongues In Aspic
Rehearsals and touring began in late 1972, with the new band’s penchant for improvisation (and Jamie Muir’s startling wild-man stage presence) immediately gaining King Crimson some excited press attention. A new album – Larks' Tongues in Aspic – was released early the next year. This was the first King Crimson record to demonstrate Fripp’s dominant compositional vision, without either the template of Ian McDonaldIan McDonald (musician)
Ian McDonald is an English multi-instrumental musician, best known as a founding member of progressive rock group King Crimson, formed in 1969, and of the hard rock band Foreigner in 1976. He is well-known as a rock session musician, predominantly as a saxophonist...
's songwriting and arrangements or the influence of Sinfield’s elaborate conceptual lyrics and references, and as such was also the first King Crimson record to escape from the shadow of the debut album.
The band's new sound was exemplified by the album's two-part title track
Larks' Tongues in Aspic (song)
"Larks' Tongues in Aspic" is a multi-part epic progressive rock song by King Crimson released over the course of three albums and 27 years, Larks' Tongues in Aspic in 1973, Three of a Perfect Pair in 1984, and The ConstruKction of Light in 2000...
– a significant change from what King Crimson had done before, drawing from influences as diverse as Bartók
Béla Bartók
Béla Viktor János Bartók was a Hungarian composer and pianist. He is considered one of the most important composers of the 20th century and is regarded, along with Liszt, as Hungary's greatest composer...
, the free music scene, Vaughan Williams
Ralph Vaughan Williams
Ralph Vaughan Williams OM was an English composer of symphonies, chamber music, opera, choral music, and film scores. He was also a collector of English folk music and song: this activity both influenced his editorial approach to the English Hymnal, beginning in 1904, in which he included many...
and the embryonic heavy metal
Heavy metal music
Heavy metal is a genre of rock music that developed in the late 1960s and early 1970s, largely in the Midlands of the United Kingdom and the United States...
sound,
and featuring a whisper-to-scream dynamic that was extreme even by the band's previous standards. There were some nods to the past in the continued use of Mellotron, as well as in the inclusion of stately ballads, but the band now featured a small ensemble sound with an emphasis on instrumental music. In particular, the record was permeated by Muir’s freewheeling approach to percussion and “found” instrumentation, utilising everything from a prepared drumkit to bicycle-horn bulbs, toys, bullroarers, gongs hit with chains, foley
Foley (filmmaking)
Foley is a term that describes the process of live recording of sound effects that are created by a Foley artist, which are added in post production to enhance the quality of audio for films, television, video, video games and radio....
-style sound effects and a joke laughing-bag. Wetton’s loud, crisp and overdriven playing style provided King Crimson’s most distinctive bass playing to date, while Fripp’s guitar playing had taken on a wiry and aggressive character previously seldom heard in the band’s studio recordings.
Following more touring, the group became a quartet in early 1973 when Muir suddenly departed. This was initially thought to have been due to an onstage injury – a dropped gong landing on his foot during a gig at the Marquee. Twenty-seven years later it was revealed that Muir had gone through a personal spiritual crisis and had to immediately withdraw from the band, who themselves had not been told the truth about the situation by their management. Bruford took on additional Muir influenced percussion duties to flesh out the band's sound.
Starless and Bible Black (1973–1974)
Starless and Bible Black
Starless and Bible Black is an album released by the British progressive rock band King Crimson in 1974. Most of the vocal pieces on the album are satires and commentaries on the sleaziness and materialism of society...
. This was released in January 1974, earning them a positive Rolling Stone
Rolling Stone
Rolling Stone is a US-based magazine devoted to music, liberal politics, and popular culture that is published every two weeks. Rolling Stone was founded in San Francisco in 1967 by Jann Wenner and music critic Ralph J...
review. The album built on the achievements of its predecessor, precariously balancing improvised material with careening heavy-metal riffs and songs that recalled both the Beatles’ White Album experiments and aspects of electric jazz fusion as performed by the Mahavishnu Orchestra and Miles Davis
Miles Davis
Miles Dewey Davis III was an American jazz musician, trumpeter, bandleader, and composer. Widely considered one of the most influential musicians of the 20th century, Miles Davis was, with his musical groups, at the forefront of several major developments in jazz music, including bebop, cool jazz,...
.
Two-thirds of the album was instrumental, including Fripp’s climactic moto perpetuo composition "Fracture" and the atonal sound painting of the title track. For the recording of "Trio" – a hushed and wistful improvised melody featuring Wetton on bass, Cross on violin and Fripp on flute-Mellotron – Bruford notoriously contributed “admirable restraint” by sitting with his drumsticks crossed over his chest throughout the piece, understanding that the music did not require him to add anything, and was thus given compositional credit equal to the rest of his bandmates. Although most of Starless and Bible Black
Starless and Bible Black
Starless and Bible Black is an album released by the British progressive rock band King Crimson in 1974. Most of the vocal pieces on the album are satires and commentaries on the sleaziness and materialism of society...
had been recorded at live performances, it was painstakingly edited to sound like another studio album. Fuller documentation of the quartet’s live work was revealed eighteen years later on 1992’s four-disc live recording The Great Deceiver, and again on 1997’s double live album The Night Watch, which used the original source tapes for much of the material on Starless And Bible Black.
By this time, the band were once again beginning to divide into performance factions. Musically, Fripp found himself positioned between Bruford and Wetton, who played with such force and increasing volume that Fripp once compared them to “a flying brick wall”, and Cross whose amplified acoustic violin was increasingly being drowned out by the rhythm section, forcing him to concentrate more on keyboards. An increasingly frustrated Cross began to withdraw musically and personally, with the result that he was voted out of the group following the band's 1974 tour of Europe and America, playing his final performance in Central Park
Central Park
Central Park is a public park in the center of Manhattan in New York City, United States. The park initially opened in 1857, on of city-owned land. In 1858, Frederick Law Olmsted and Calvert Vaux won a design competition to improve and expand the park with a plan they entitled the Greensward Plan...
in New York.
Red (1974)
The remaining trio reconvened to record a new album, which would be called RedRed (King Crimson album)
Red is a 1974 album by progressive rock group King Crimson.It was their last studio recording of the 1970s and the last before the lead member Robert Fripp temporarily disbanded the group....
. Unknown to the other two, Fripp, increasingly disillusioned with the music business, had been turning his attention to the writings of the mystic George Gurdjieff, and experienced a spiritual crisis-cum-awakening immediately before the band entered the studio. He would later describe his experience as having seemed as if “the top of my head blew off.” Although most of the album material had been written, the transformed Fripp retreated into himself in the studio and “withdrew his opinion”, leaving Bruford and Wetton to direct most of the sessions.
In spite of this, Red proved to be one of the strongest and most consistent King Crimson albums to date. It has been described as "an impressive achievement" for a group about to disband, with "intensely dynamic" musical chemistry between the band members. Opening with the harsh, tritone-based instrumental that gave the album its name, the album also featured two relatively short and punchy Wetton-led songs, and a last look back at the period with David Cross via the live improvisation “Providence”, which was recorded on the preceding tour. The album finale was the majestic twelve-minute “Starless”, which acted, in effect, as a potted musical history of the band, travelling from Mellotron-driven ballad grandeur via intense improvisation to savagely structured metallic attack and back again. Red also included guest appearances by former members and collaborators. In addition to Cross’s appearance on “Providence”, Robin Miller and Marc Charig
Marc Charig
Mark Charig is a British trumpeter and cornetist.He was particularly active in the late 1960s and early 1970s, when he played in settings as diverse as Long John Baldry's group, Bluesology, Soft Machine, and Keith Tippett's group and his Centipede big band...
returned on oboe and cornet for the first time since Islands, and both Mel Collins
Mel Collins
Mel Collins is a British saxophonist and flautist and session musician.He has worked in a wide variety of contexts ranging from R&B and blues rock to jazz, but is perhaps known for his work in progressive rock, as with King Crimson, Camel and the Alan Parsons Project.-Career:Collins has worked...
and Ian McDonald
Ian McDonald (musician)
Ian McDonald is an English multi-instrumental musician, best known as a founding member of progressive rock group King Crimson, formed in 1969, and of the hard rock band Foreigner in 1976. He is well-known as a rock session musician, predominantly as a saxophonist...
played saxophone
Saxophone
The saxophone is a conical-bore transposing musical instrument that is a member of the woodwind family. Saxophones are usually made of brass and played with a single-reed mouthpiece similar to that of the clarinet. The saxophone was invented by the Belgian instrument maker Adolphe Sax in 1846...
s on “Starless”.
With one of their strongest albums ready to promote, King Crimson’s future prospects looked bright, and talks were underway regarding Ian McDonald
Ian McDonald (musician)
Ian McDonald is an English multi-instrumental musician, best known as a founding member of progressive rock group King Crimson, formed in 1969, and of the hard rock band Foreigner in 1976. He is well-known as a rock session musician, predominantly as a saxophonist...
rejoining the band. However, Fripp did not want to tour as he felt that the "world was coming to an end
Eschatology
Eschatology is a part of theology, philosophy, and futurology concerned with what are believed to be the final events in history, or the ultimate destiny of humanity, commonly referred to as the end of the world or the World to Come...
". He was, in any case, becoming discouraged by both the working relationships in the band and by the realities of high-profile rock band activity, which he increasingly saw as overblown and detrimental to both musicians and audience. Two months before the release of Red, Fripp announced that King Crimson had "ceased to exist" and was "completely over for ever and ever", The group formally disbanded on 25 September 1974. Much later on, it was revealed that Fripp had attempted to interest his managers in a Fripp-free version of King Crimson (consisting of Wetton, Bruford and McDonald) but had been turned down.
USA (1975)
A posthumous live album, USAUSA (album)
USA is a live album by the English band King Crimson, released in 1975.*Tracks 1-6 and 8-9 recorded at the Casino, Asbury Park, June 28, 1974*Track 7 recorded at the Palace Theatre, Providence, USA, June 30, 1974...
, documenting this version of King Crimson's final tour of the United States, was released in 1975 to critical acclaim, reviewers calling it "a must" for fans of the band and "insanity you're better off having". Technical issues with some of the original tapes rendered some of David Cross' violin parts inaudible when mixed in 1974, so Roxy Music
Roxy Music
Roxy Music was a British art rock band formed in 1971 by Bryan Ferry, who became the group's lead vocalist and chief songwriter, and bassist Graham Simpson. The other members are Phil Manzanera , Andy Mackay and Paul Thompson . Former members include Brian Eno , and Eddie Jobson...
’s Eddie Jobson
Eddie Jobson
Edwin "Eddie" Jobson is an English keyboardist and violinist noted for his use of synthesizers. He has been a member of several progressive rock bands, including Curved Air, Roxy Music, U.K., and Jethro Tull. He was also part of Frank Zappa's band in 1976-77...
was brought in to provide studio overdubs of violin and keyboards. Further edits were also necessary to allow for the time limitations of a single vinyl album. The album was reissued with two extra tracks, “Fracture” and “Starless”, in 2005.
Discipline (1981)
By 1981, Fripp had opted to fold The League of GentlemenLeague of Gentlemen (band)
The League of Gentlemen was a band active during March–December 1980 that featured guitarist Robert Fripp of King Crimson fame. Other members included bass guitarist Sara Lee , keyboardist Barry Andrews and percussionist Johnny Toobad, replaced late in the band's tenure by Kevin Wilkinson...
in favour of a project that was more artistically and commercially ambitious. At the time, he had no intention of reforming King Crimson. However, his first step was to contact Bill Bruford and ask whether he wanted to join a new band, to which Bruford agreed. Fripp then contacted guitarist and singer Adrian Belew
Adrian Belew
Adrian Belew is an American guitarist, singer, songwriter, multi-instrumentalist and record producer...
(ex-David Bowie
David Bowie
David Bowie is an English musician, actor, record producer and arranger. A major figure for over four decades in the world of popular music, Bowie is widely regarded as an innovator, particularly for his work in the 1970s...
/Frank Zappa
Frank Zappa
Frank Vincent Zappa was an American composer, singer-songwriter, electric guitarist, record producer and film director. In a career spanning more than 30 years, Zappa wrote rock, jazz, orchestral and musique concrète works. He also directed feature-length films and music videos, and designed...
), whom he had met when Belew's band Gaga had supported The League of Gentlemen
League of Gentlemen (band)
The League of Gentlemen was a band active during March–December 1980 that featured guitarist Robert Fripp of King Crimson fame. Other members included bass guitarist Sara Lee , keyboardist Barry Andrews and percussionist Johnny Toobad, replaced late in the band's tenure by Kevin Wilkinson...
. Belew was, at the time, a major collaborator with Talking Heads
Talking Heads
Talking Heads were an American New Wave and avant-garde band formed in 1975 in New York City and active until 1991. The band comprised David Byrne, Chris Frantz, Tina Weymouth and Jerry Harrison...
both on record and on tour. Fripp had never been in a band with another guitarist before, other than his stint in Peter Gabriel's 1977 touring band, so the decision to seek a second guitarist was indicative of Fripp's desire to create a sound unlike any of his previous work. Belew (who agreed to join the new band following his tour commitments with Talking Heads
Talking Heads
Talking Heads were an American New Wave and avant-garde band formed in 1975 in New York City and active until 1991. The band comprised David Byrne, Chris Frantz, Tina Weymouth and Jerry Harrison...
) would also become the band’s lyricist.
Having decided against selecting Bruford’s colleague Jeff Berlin
Jeff Berlin
Jeff Berlin is an American jazz, jazz fusion and progressive rock electric bass player.Jeff Berlin's bass playing is somewhat similar to that of Jaco Pastorius, though Berlin plays a fretted bass and has stated his distaste for Jaco imitators.-Early life:Jeff Berlin was born to parents who were...
as bass player (on the grounds that his playing style was "too busy"), Fripp and Bruford resigned themselves to a long search and began auditioning scores of applicants in New York. On the third day, Fripp absented himself from the auditions after hearing about three musicians and returned several hours later accompanied by Tony Levin
Tony Levin
Tony Levin is an American progressive rock musician, specializing in bass guitar, Chapman stick and upright bass ....
, who got the job after playing a single chorus of "Red". Fripp later confessed that, had he initially known that Levin was available and interested, he would have selected him as first-choice bass player without auditions. In addition to his bass-playing contributions, Levin introduced the band to the use of the Chapman Stick
Chapman Stick
The Chapman Stick is an electric musical instrument devised by Emmett Chapman in the early 1970s. A member of the guitar family, the Chapman Stick usually has ten or twelve individually tuned strings and has been used on music recordings to play bass lines, melody lines, chords or textures...
, a ten-string polyphonic two-handed tapping
Tapping
Tapping is a guitar playing technique, where a string is fretted and set into vibration as part of a single motion of being pushed onto the fretboard, as opposed to the standard technique being fretted with one hand and picked with the other...
instrument of the guitar family that had both a bass and treble range and that Levin played in an "utterly original style".
Fripp named the new quartet Discipline, and the band flew to England to rehearse and write. They made their live debut at Moles Club in Bath on 30 April 1981 and went on to tour the UK, supported by The Lounge Lizards
The Lounge Lizards
The Lounge Lizards are a jazz group formed in 1978 by saxophone player John Lurie.Initially a tongue in cheek "fake jazz" combo, drawing on punk rock and no wave as much as jazz, The Lounge Lizards have since become respected for their creative and distinctive sound.-History:Lounge Lizards were...
. By October 1981, the four members of Discipline had made the collective decision to ditch their original name and to reactivate and use the name of King Crimson.
The new version of King Crimson bore some resemblance to New Wave music
New Wave music
New Wave is a subgenre of :rock music that emerged in the mid to late 1970s alongside punk rock. The term at first generally was synonymous with punk rock before being considered a genre in its own right that incorporated aspects of electronic and experimental music, mod subculture, disco and 1960s...
, which can be attributed in part to the work of both Belew and Fripp with Talking Heads
Talking Heads
Talking Heads were an American New Wave and avant-garde band formed in 1975 in New York City and active until 1991. The band comprised David Byrne, Chris Frantz, Tina Weymouth and Jerry Harrison...
and David Bowie
David Bowie
David Bowie is an English musician, actor, record producer and arranger. A major figure for over four decades in the world of popular music, Bowie is widely regarded as an innovator, particularly for his work in the 1970s...
, Levin's work with Peter Gabriel
Peter Gabriel
Peter Brian Gabriel is an English singer, musician, and songwriter who rose to fame as the lead vocalist and flautist of the progressive rock group Genesis. After leaving Genesis, Gabriel went on to a successful solo career...
, and Fripp's work on Exposure
Exposure (Robert Fripp album)
-Side two:-2006 bonus disc third edition:-2006 bonus tracks :-Personnel:* Robert Fripp — guitars, Frippertronics* Daryl Hall — vocals on "Preface," "You Burn Me Up," "North Star," "Disengage II," "Chicago" disc two, "New York" disc two, "Exposure" bonus track, "Mary" bonus track; piano on "You Burn...
and with The League of Gentlemen
League of Gentlemen (band)
The League of Gentlemen was a band active during March–December 1980 that featured guitarist Robert Fripp of King Crimson fame. Other members included bass guitarist Sara Lee , keyboardist Barry Andrews and percussionist Johnny Toobad, replaced late in the band's tenure by Kevin Wilkinson...
. With this new band, described by J. D. Considine
J. D. Considine
J. D. Considine is an established music critic who has been writing about music professionally since 1977. His work has been published in numerous newspapers and music magazines, and he has contributed to several books. Over the years, he has claimed to have put over three million words into...
in The New Rolling Stone Album Guide as having a "jaw-dropping technique" of "knottily rhythmic, harmonically demanding workouts", Fripp intended to create the sound of a "rock gamelan
Gamelan
A gamelan is a musical ensemble from Indonesia, typically from the islands of Bali or Java, featuring a variety of instruments such as metallophones, xylophones, drums and gongs; bamboo flutes, bowed and plucked strings. Vocalists may also be included....
", with an interlocking rhythmic quality to the paired guitars that he found similar to Indonesia
Indonesia
Indonesia , officially the Republic of Indonesia , is a country in Southeast Asia and Oceania. Indonesia is an archipelago comprising approximately 13,000 islands. It has 33 provinces with over 238 million people, and is the world's fourth most populous country. Indonesia is a republic, with an...
n gamelan ensembles. Fripp concentrated on playing complex picked arpeggios while Belew provided a striking arsenal of guitar sounds (including animal and insect noises, backward envelopes, industrial textures and demented lead guitar screams) utilising a broad range of electronic effects and unorthodox playing styles. Within the rhythm section, Levin brought elements of contemporary urban styles to the basslines, while Bruford experimented, at Fripp’s behest, with a cymbal-free drumkit. As with previous incarnations of the band, the new King Crimson line-up also embraced new technology that in turn informed the music – in this case the Roland guitar synthesiser, the Chapman Stick
Chapman Stick
The Chapman Stick is an electric musical instrument devised by Emmett Chapman in the early 1970s. A member of the guitar family, the Chapman Stick usually has ten or twelve individually tuned strings and has been used on music recordings to play bass lines, melody lines, chords or textures...
and the Simmons electronic drumkit
Simmons (electronic drum company)
Simmons was a pioneering British manufacturer of electronic drums that supplied electronic kits from 1980 to 1994. The drums' distinctive, electronic sound can be found on countless albums from the 1980s....
. Although King Crimson’s trademark Mellotrons were no longer present, Fripp’s rich and overdriven lead guitar breaks provided a link to the past, with the new band also having turned in animated versions of "Red" and "Larks’ Tongues in Aspic, Part 2" during the original Discipline tour.
The first album by the new line-up was 1981’s Discipline, an immediate benchmark for the new sound and still considered to be one of the band’s finest records. The songs were short and snappy by King Crimson standards, with Belew’s pop sense and quirky lyrical approach a surprising contrast to previous Crimson grandeur. The music incorporated additional influences including post-punk, latterday funk, go-go and African-styled polyrhythms. While the band’s previous taste for improvisation was now tightly reined in, one of the album’s two instrumentals (the serene "The Sheltering Sky") had emerged unplanned out of group rehearsals. The noisy, half-spoken/half-shouted "Indiscipline" had been partially written in order to give Bruford a chance to escape from the strict rhythmic demands of the rest of the album and to play against the beat in any way that he could.
Beat (1982)
Discipline was followed in 1982 by BeatBeat (King Crimson album)
Beat is an album by the British rock band King Crimson, released in 1982.Of King Crimson's thirteen studio albums, this is the only album that does not have a title track, although its title is included in the name of the song "Heartbeat"....
, which was both the first King Crimson album to have been recorded with the same band line-up as the album preceding it and the first not to have been produced by a member of the group. The album had a loosely-linked theme of the beat generation
Beat generation
The Beat Generation refers to a group of American post-WWII writers who came to prominence in the 1950s, as well as the cultural phenomena that they both documented and inspired...
and its writings, reflected in song titles such as "Neal and Jack and Me" (inspired by Neal Cassady
Neal Cassady
Neal Leon Cassady was a major figure of the Beat Generation of the 1950s and the psychedelic movement of the 1960s. He served as the model for the character Dean Moriarty in Jack Kerouac's novel On the Road....
and Jack Kerouac
Jack Kerouac
Jean-Louis "Jack" Lebris de Kerouac was an American novelist and poet. He is considered a literary iconoclast and, alongside William S. Burroughs and Allen Ginsberg, a pioneer of the Beat Generation. Kerouac is recognized for his spontaneous method of writing, covering topics such as Catholic...
), "The Howler" (inspired by Allan Ginsberg’s “Howl”) and "Sartori in Tangier" (inspired by Paul Bowles
Paul Bowles
Paul Frederic Bowles was an American expatriate composer, author, and translator.Following a cultured middle-class upbringing in New York City, during which he displayed a talent for music and writing, Bowles pursued his education at the University of Virginia before making various trips to Paris...
). Fripp had asked Belew to read Keroauc's novel On the Road
On the Road
On the Road is a novel by American writer Jack Kerouac, written in April 1951, and published by Viking Press in 1957. It is a largely autobiographical work that was based on the spontaneous road trips of Kerouac and his friends across mid-century America. It is often considered a defining work of...
. for inspiration, and the album was peppered with themes of travel, disorientation and loneliness. While the record was a noticeably poppier version of the Discipline template (and contained the limpid ballads "Heartbeat" and "Two Hands", the latter with lyrics by Belew’s wife Margaret), it also featured the harsh, atonal and entirely improvised “Requiem”, which was more reminiscent of the left-field work of King Crimson circa Starless And Bible Black.
The recording process of Beat was fraught, with Belew suffering high stress levels over his duties as frontman and main songwriter. On one occasion, he clashed with Fripp and ordered him out of the studio. Fripp would later sardonically comment “So much for my being the leader of King Crimson”. The band's immediate differences were resolved and King Crimson toured again, followed by a recuperative time-out during which Belew recorded a solo album.
Three of a Perfect Pair (1984)
Reconvening to record Three of a Perfect PairThree of a Perfect Pair
Three of a Perfect Pair is an album by the band King Crimson, released in 1984. The album is the culmination of the band's 80s period and is a balance between the experimental sounds of the "Red" album, Discipline, and the accessibility of the "Blue" album, Beat. Robert Fripp and Adrian Belew took...
in 1984, the band found the compositional process hard and this time had difficulty reconciling the disparate musical ideas of the four members. They ultimately opted for a "two-sided" album consisting of "the left side"—four of the band's poppier songs and a melodical instrumental—and a "right side" of experimental material that ranged from extended and atonal improvisations in the tradition of the mid-70s band to a third tightly-structured episode in the "Larks' Tongues in Aspic" sequence. The "left side" songs had a loose lyrical theme—this time the workings of the brain (from dysfunction to dream), and its impact on life. The "right side" had more of a preoccupation with technological society, from the lengthy instrumental "Industry" to the sprechstimme piece “Dig Me” (sung from the viewpoint of a scrapped automobile
Automobile
An automobile, autocar, motor car or car is a wheeled motor vehicle used for transporting passengers, which also carries its own engine or motor...
) and saw the band experimenting with more mechanistic sounds. The 2001 CD remaster of the album added "the other side", a collection of remixes and improvisation outtakes plus Levin’s tongue-in-cheek vocal piece "The King Crimson Barbershop".
The last concert of the Three Of A Perfect Pair tour, which was also the last concert played by the 1980s line-up, was recorded at the Spectrum club in Montreal
Montreal
Montreal is a city in Canada. It is the largest city in the province of Quebec, the second-largest city in Canada and the seventh largest in North America...
and subsequently released in 1998 as the live album Absent Lovers: Live in Montreal
Absent Lovers: Live in Montreal
Absent Lovers: Live in Montreal is a live album by the band King Crimson, recorded July 11, 1984 and released in 1998. This was taken from the final night of their 1984 tour and would subsequently be King Crimson's last performance until the THRAK warm-up shows in Argentina ten years later.-Track...
. Immediately after this concert, Fripp dissolved the band for the second time, having become dissatisfied with its working methods. Bruford and Belew were to express some frustration over this (with the latter recalling that the first he had heard of the split was when he read about it in Musician magazine). Despite these circumstances, the musicians remained on fairly amicable terms. Belew would later refer to the band "taking a break" that ultimately lasted for ten years.
King Crimson, line-up 5 (1994–1997)
At some point in the early 1990s, Adrian Belew visited Fripp in England and strongly expressed his interest in playing in a reformed King Crimson. Following the end of his tour with David Sylvian, Fripp began to assemble a new version of the band, bringing Belew and Levin back from the 1980s line-up while adding Trey Gunn on Chapman Stick and Jerry Marotta on drums. In the early stages of planning, Marotta was replaced by Pat Mastelotto. The last addition to the line-up was Bill Bruford as second drummer. Fripp explained the unexpected sextet arrangement by claiming to have had the vision of a “double trio” (two guitarists, two bass/Stick players and two drummers) to explore a different type of King Crimson music. Bruford, however, would later assert that he had lobbied his own way into the band, believing that King Crimson was very much “his gig”, and that Fripp had come up with the philosophical explanation later. In his 2009 autobiography, he also revealed that one of the conditions Fripp had imposed upon his rejoining was that Bruford would cede all creative control of the band to Fripp.Vroooom and B'Boom (1994–1995)
The "double trio" convened for rehearsals in Woodstock in 1994 and released the EPExtended play
An EP is a musical recording which contains more music than a single, but is too short to qualify as a full album or LP. The term EP originally referred only to specific types of vinyl records other than 78 rpm standard play records and LP records, but it is now applied to mid-length Compact...
Vrooom
VROOOM
Vrooom is an EP by the band King Crimson released in 1994, a companion to the subsequent album Thrak .All of the tracks on Vrooom reappeared on Thrak as different recordings...
in the same year. This revealed the new King Crimson sound, which featured elements of the interlocking guitars on Discipline and the heavy rock feel of Red, but also involved a greater use of ambient electronic sound and ideas from industrial music. In contrast, many of the actual songs – mostly written or finalised by Belew – displayed stronger elements of 1960s pop than before – in particular, a Beatles
The Beatles
The Beatles were an English rock band, active throughout the 1960s and one of the most commercially successful and critically acclaimed acts in the history of popular music. Formed in Liverpool, by 1962 the group consisted of John Lennon , Paul McCartney , George Harrison and Ringo Starr...
influence (although Bruford would also refer to the band as sounding like "a dissonant Shadows on steroids"). As with previous line-ups, new technology was used for, and informed, the music. In this case, the technology was MIDI, used extensively by Fripp, Belew and Gunn, to which Gunn would add the Warr Guitar
Warr guitar
Warr Guitars is a company that manufactures the Warr Guitar, a guitar like musical instrument developed by the company's founder, Mark Warr.-Description:The Warr Guitar resembles a standard electric guitar, albeit with a very low action and more strings...
(a tapping guitar instrument with which he would replace his Chapman Stick
Chapman Stick
The Chapman Stick is an electric musical instrument devised by Emmett Chapman in the early 1970s. A member of the guitar family, the Chapman Stick usually has ten or twelve individually tuned strings and has been used on music recordings to play bass lines, melody lines, chords or textures...
after VROOOM).
The apparent twinning of instruments was, in fact, used less than initially suggested. Using Soundscapes
Soundscapes by Robert Fripp
A musical style developed by guitarist Robert Fripp, involving the use of audio loops created and modified by a specific set of digital music synthesizers and digital audio processing devices....
(the greatly expanded digital successor to Frippertronics
Frippertronics
Frippertronics was a specific tape looping technique used by Robert Fripp. It evolved from a system of tape looping originally developed in the electronic music studios of the early 1960s that was first used by composers Terry Riley and Pauline Oliveros and made popular through its use in ambient...
) Fripp's guitar took on more of a textural and ambient role in many pieces. Gunn’s Stick and Warr Guitar playing, rather than staying in the bass register with Levin, covered a proportion of the guitar arpeggios and functioned as another lead instrument (as well as producing experimental and distorted sounds and acting as a MIDI trigger). The main use of twinned instrumentation was in the drumming. Bruford initially took on a more exploratory role over Mastelotto’s steady beat, but this soon shifted toward a more equitable sharing of percussive roles.
The revived band made its concert debut in Buenos Aires in 1995. The concert was recorded for the live album B'Boom: Live in Argentina
B'Boom: Live in Argentina
B'Boom: Live in Argentina is a live album by the band King Crimson, released in 1995. All songs were recorded between October 6 and October 16, 1994 at the Broadway in Buenos Aires, Argentina, except for "Heartbeat" which was recorded in Córdoba.King Crimson's Argentinian shows in late 1994 were...
, which was released in August of the same year). In addition to a large body of new material, the band played three mid-70s pieces ("Red", "Larks’ Tongues In Aspic Part 2" and "The Talking Drum") and six songs from the 1980s repertoire, predominantly from Discipline.
Thrak and Thrakattak (1995–1996)
King Crimson released their next full-length studio album, ThrakTHRAK
THRAK is an album by the band King Crimson released in 1995, the successor to the preceding mini-album Vrooom . This album was recorded in the "double trio" format of King Crimson.-Track listing:...
in April 1995. Containing revised versions of most of the tracks on Vrooom, Thrak was described by reviewers as having "jazz-scented rock structures, characterised by noisy, angular, exquisite guitar interplay" and an "athletic, ever-inventive rhythm section", whilst being in tune with the sound of alternative rock musicians in the mid-1990s. Examples of the band’s efforts to integrate their multiple elements could be heard on the complex post-prog songs “Dinosaur” and “Sex Sleep Eat Drink Dream” as well as the more straightforward “One Time” and the funk-pop inspired “People”. Instrumentally, the album featured a couple of clear descendants of the driving “Red” (“VROOOM “ and “VROOOM VROOOM”), the drum duet “B’Boom”, the savagely displaced and rhythmic “THRAK” and a couple of brief solo Soundscapes from Fripp. The album also featured the brief return of Mellotron to the band’s sonic palette.
During 1995 and 1996 King Crimson continued to tour. In 1996, the band released the challenging avantgarde live album Thrakattak
THRaKaTTaK
Thrakattak is a live album by the band King Crimson, released in 1996.*Compiled from performances of, and improvisations during, the piece "Thrak" in USA and Japan....
, which consisted entirely of concert improvisations from the midsection of performances of "THRAK", digitally combined into an hour-long extended improvisation. A more conventional live recording from the period was later made available on the 2001 double CD release Vrooom Vrooom
Vrooom Vrooom
Vrooom Vrooom is a live album by the band King Crimson, released in 2001.Although it was released during the active lifespan of the 2000-2003 King Crimson "Double Duo" lineup , Vrooom Vrooom is compiled from recordings by the previous six-man line-up of...
, as was a 1995 concert on the 2003 Déjà Vrooom
Déjà VROOOM
Déjà Vrooom is a live DVD by the band King Crimson, released in 1999 as a double-sided disc and reissued in 2007 as a double-layer disc. It was recorded at Nakano Sun Plaza, Tokyo, Japan, 5-6 October 1995...
DVD.
Although musically exciting, the Double Trio was expensive and cumbersome to run, which in turn led to insecurity. In mid-1997, the band gathered for rehearsals in Nashville that came to a compositional impasse in which none of the generated material appeared to satisfy Fripp. At this point, the friction between Fripp and a particularly exasperated Bruford effectively ended the latter’s time as a King Crimson member. Bruford would later comment "by now, Robert and I couldn't even agree where to have dinner. And if you can't agree that, you sure as heck can't play together." This, plus the lack of workable material and coherent group ideas, could have broken the band up altogether. Instead, the six members opted for an alternative solution – the ProjeKcts.
ProjeKcts 1-X (1997–1999)
Rather than split up absolutely, the six musicians of the Double Trio decided to work in smaller "sub-groups" – or "fraKctalisations", according to Fripp – called ProjeKctsProjeKcts
The ProjeKcts are a succession of spin-off projects associated with the band King Crimson.Devoted to instrumental and heavily improvised music, the ProjeKcts were most active from 1997 to 1999, but have performed intermittently since...
. This enabled the group to continue developing musical ideas and searching for Crimson's next direction without the practical difficulty and expense of convening all six members in one place at once. As with previous King Crimson endeavours, the ProjeKcts embraced new technology – in this case, Mastelotto's electronic drum loop devices, Trey Gunn’s MIDI-triggered "talkbox" and the new electronic Roland V-Drums
Roland V-Drums
V-Drum is a trademarked umbrella term for a variety of electronic drums, drum brain modules, and related electronic percussion product manufactured and trademarked by Roland Corporation....
played by both Mastelotto and Belew. (Bruford had declined to play the V-drums despite Fripp’s request). Various King Crimson members have continued to create new ProjeKcts up until the present day, as and where necessary (and to cover recent hiatuses in main group activity).
The first four ProjeKcts played live in the US, Japan and the UK during 1998 and 1999 and released a number of recordings that were in many respects similar to the Thrakattak album, demonstrating a high degree of free improvisation
Free improvisation
Free improvisation or free music is improvised music without any rules beyond the logic or inclination of the musician involved. The term can refer to both a technique and as a recognizable genre in its own right....
. These have been collectively described by music critic Considine
J. D. Considine
J. D. Considine is an established music critic who has been writing about music professionally since 1977. His work has been published in numerous newspapers and music magazines, and he has contributed to several books. Over the years, he has claimed to have put over three million words into...
as "frequently astonishing" but also as lacking in melody
Melody
A melody , also tune, voice, or line, is a linear succession of musical tones which is perceived as a single entity...
, and thus too difficult for the casual listener.
- ProjeKct One (Fripp, Bruford, Gunn and Levin) – assembled for a four-night stint in London. The band took on an entirely improvised free-jazz direction and was primarily led by the more jazz-inclined Bruford and Levin (who, for this project, favoured acoustic drums and upright bass respectively). This can also be seen as Bruford's final attempt to work within a King Crimson context.
- ProjeKct Two (Fripp, Gunn and Belew) – explored more Crimsonic instrumental structures with plenty of MIDI triggering and virtual instrumentation (such as impossible piano lines played via MIDI guitar) plus the unusual and stimulating element of Belew playing electronic drums rather than guitar. The music was generally more light-hearted and humorous than most King Crimson-associated material.
- ProjeKct Three (Fripp, Gunn and Mastelotto) – explored similar territory to ProjeKct Two but was a much faster-paced experiment driven primarily by Mastelotto’s multi-layered electronic rhythm approach (which drew extensively on high-speed drum and bass and electronica)
- ProjeKct Four (Fripp, Gunn, Mastelotto and Levin) explored similar territory to ProjeKct Three, although it actually preceded ProjeKct Three into action; however, the presence of Levin on bass and Stick resulted in a much fuller "live band" sound and a more driving avant-rock approach.
- ProjeKct X – a studio-only rearrangement of the 2000 King Crimson line-up, with composition and ideas led by the rhythm section rather than by Fripp and Belew.
King Crimson, line-up 6 (2000–2004)
By the time the ProjeKcts came to an end, Bruford had entirely left the King Crimson world in order to fully embrace his jazz work with EarthworksEarthworks (band)
Bill Bruford's Earthworks was a British jazz band led by drummer Bill Bruford. The band recorded several albums for Editions EG, Discipline Global Mobile and Summerfold Records....
and others. Levin’s session career commitments – mostly to Peter Gabriel
Peter Gabriel
Peter Brian Gabriel is an English singer, musician, and songwriter who rose to fame as the lead vocalist and flautist of the progressive rock group Genesis. After leaving Genesis, Gabriel went on to a successful solo career...
and Seal
Seal (musician)
Seal Henry Olusegun Olumide Adeola Samuel , known simply as Seal, is a British soul and R&B singer-songwriter, of Nigerian and Brazilian background. Seal has won numerous music awards throughout his career, including three Brit Awards—winning Best British Male in 1992, four Grammy Awards, and an...
– were also obstructing future King Crimson activity. Fortunately, Levin's lack of availability suited Belew’s preference for working with a smaller unit following the logistical challenges of the Double Trio, and it was decided that Levin could withdraw amicably from the band for the moment. (Fripp stated that he still considered Levin to be a King Crimson member, albeit for now an inactive “fifth member”.)
The remaining four active members of King Crimson – Belew, Fripp, Gunn, and Mastelotto – continued with the band, sometimes referring to themselves as the “Double Duo” in a tongue-in-cheek reference to the previous line-up. Despite featuring two-thirds of the previous band’s personnel (and no new members), this incarnation of the band would be strongly distinct from the Double Trio and was effectively a different, rather than reduced, line-up. The altered membership and the experience of the ProjeKcts led to changes in role. Gunn began to concentrate on the bass register for his Warr Guitar playing, and added work on the baritone guitar
Baritone guitar
The baritone guitar is a variation on the standard guitar, with a longer scale length that allows it to be tuned to a lower range. It first appeared in the classical music realm...
and Ashbory silicone-string bass guitar
Ashbory bass
The Ashbory bass, designed by Alun Ashworth-Jones and Nigel Thornbory, is an 18-inch scale fretless electric bass developed in 1985. This scale is just over half of the 34-inch scale of an ordinary bass guitar...
. Mastellotto made a much greater use of electronics. Once again, new technology was employed (the electronic V-Drums and rhythm-loop machines, which had been used for the ProjeKCts), while Belew took the additional step of entirely embracing Fripp’s New Standard Tuning
New Standard Tuning
The new standard tuning is a special type of guitar tuning , introduced by Robert Fripp of King Crimson, who has stated that the tuning "flew by" while he was sweating in a sauna in September 1983. Fripp began using the tuning in 1985 after stepping out of the spotlight before beginning his Guitar...
on guitar.
The ConstruKction of Light (2000)
King Crimson recorded their next album, The ConstruKction of LightThe ConstruKction of Light
The ConstruKction of Light is an album by the band King Crimson, released in 2000. It has the distinction of being the first studio album to be released by King Crimson without Bill Bruford on drums since prior to the release of Lark's Tongues in Aspic . It also in notable for the absence of Tony...
, in Adrian Belew’s basement and garage near Nashville. The results were released in 2000 and proved to be the band’s most hard-rocking album to date. All of the pieces were metallic and harsh in sound, similar to the work of contemporary alternative metal
Alternative metal
Alternative metal is a genre of alternative rock and heavy metal that gained popularity in the early 1990s. Most notably, alternative metal bands are characterized by heavy guitar riffs and experimental approaches to heavy music.-Origins:...
bands such as Tool
Tool (band)
Tool is an American rock band from Los Angeles, California. Formed in 1990, the group's line-up has included drummer Danny Carey, guitarist Adam Jones, and vocalist Maynard James Keenan. Since 1995, Justin Chancellor has been the band's bassist, replacing their original bassist Paul D'Amour...
, with a distinct electronic texture, a heavy, processed drum sound from Mastelotto, and a different take on the interlocked guitar sound that the band had used since the 1980s. With the exception of a parodic industrial blues, sung by Belew through a voice changer, under the pseudonym of “Hooter J. Johnson”, the songs were unrelentingly complex and challenging to the listener, with plenty of rhythmic displacement to add to the harsh textures. The album also contained a lengthy fourth instalment of the “Larks’ Tongues In Aspic” series and another piece, “FraKCtured”, which effectively rewrote the 1973 piece “Fracture”. Fripp argued that the original “Fracture” had been written for and interpreted by a specific group of musicians, and that in order to pursue a similar theme in 2000 it had been necessary to rewrite the music in accordance with the skills and personalities of the current line-up. This explanation, however, did not protect the album from criticism for apparently lacking new ideas.
Although the whole band contributed to arrangements, the basic material on The ConstruKction of Light
The ConstruKction of Light
The ConstruKction of Light is an album by the band King Crimson, released in 2000. It has the distinction of being the first studio album to be released by King Crimson without Bill Bruford on drums since prior to the release of Lark's Tongues in Aspic . It also in notable for the absence of Tony...
was almost entirely composed by Belew (songs) and Fripp (instrumentals). To avoid creative frustration, the band recorded a parallel album at the same time under the name of ProjeKct X
ProjeKct X
ProjeKct X was a side project of the music band King Crimson during the year 2000.In 2000, while the band King Crimson recorded their album The ConstruKction of Light, the four members of this line-up also recorded the album Heaven and Earth as ProjeKct X...
, called Heaven and Earth
Heaven and Earth (2000 album)
Heaven and Earth is an album by "ProjeKct X" released in 2000 on the Pony Canyon label as a Japanese Exclusive Release.-Tracklist:# The Business of Pleasure 2:44.39# Hat in The Middle 3:43.72# Side Window 3:08.39# Maximizer 6:29.35...
. This second album was conceived and led by Mastelotto and Gunn (with Fripp and Belew playing subsidiary roles in the band) and was a further development of the polyrhythmic/dance music approach seen earlier in the ProjeKCts. The album’s title track was also included as a bonus track on The ConstruKCtion of Light. Like The ConstruKction of Light, Heaven and Earth was criticised for an apparent lack of new ideas.
King Crimson toured to support the records, releasing a live document of the results as the triple live album Heavy ConstruKction
Heavy ConstruKction
Heavy ConstruKction is a live album , incorporating video footage, by the band King Crimson, released by Discipline Global Mobile records in 2000...
. This showed the band constantly switching between the structured album pieces and ferocious ProjeKCt-style Soundscape-and-percussion improvisations. Among King Crimson's live engagements were shows opening for self-confessed Crimson disciples Tool
Tool (band)
Tool is an American rock band from Los Angeles, California. Formed in 1990, the group's line-up has included drummer Danny Carey, guitarist Adam Jones, and vocalist Maynard James Keenan. Since 1995, Justin Chancellor has been the band's bassist, replacing their original bassist Paul D'Amour...
in 2001. At one of these, Tool’s lead singer Maynard James Keenan
Maynard James Keenan
Maynard James Keenan is an American rock singer, songwriter, musician, record producer, winemaker, and actor. Originally from Ohio, Keenan spent his high school and college years in Michigan. After serving in the Army in the early 1980s, he attended Kendall College of Art and Design in Grand Rapids...
joked onstage: "For me, being on stage with King Crimson is like Lenny Kravitz
Lenny Kravitz
Leonard Albert "Lenny" Kravitz is an American singer-songwriter, multi-instrumentalist, record producer and arranger, whose "retro" style incorporates elements of rock, soul, R&B, funk, reggae, hard rock, psychedelic, folk and ballads...
playing with Led Zeppelin
Led Zeppelin
Led Zeppelin were an English rock band, active in the late 1960s and throughout the 1970s. Formed in 1968, they consisted of guitarist Jimmy Page, singer Robert Plant, bassist/keyboardist John Paul Jones, and drummer John Bonham...
, or Britney Spears
Britney Spears
Britney Jean Spears is an American recording artist and entertainer. Born in McComb, Mississippi, and raised in Kentwood, Louisiana, Spears began performing as a child, landing acting roles in stage productions and television shows. She signed with Jive Records in 1997 and released her debut album...
onstage with Debbie Gibson."
Level Five and Happy With What You Have To Be Happy With (2001–2002)
Later in 2001, the band released a limited edition live EP called Level FiveLevel Five
Level Five is a live album by the band King Crimson, released in 2001.*Recorded in the USA and Mexico in 2001.-Track listing:#"Dangerous Curves" 5:38...
, which featured three new pieces. A version of “The Deception of the Thrush”, a ProjeKct track now regularly featuring in the live set, plus the new tracks “Dangerous Curves” and “Virtuous Circle” suggested that the band was heading back towards a broader dynamic including quieter, more textural work. In 2002, King Crimson released another EP Happy With What You Have to Be Happy With
Happy With What You Have to Be Happy With
Happy With What You Have to Be Happy With is an EP by the band King Crimson released in 2002, a companion to the subsequent album The Power to Believe ....
. This featured eleven tracks (including a live version of “Larks’ Tongues In Aspic, Part IV”) and confirmed that the band were moving back towards greater diversity. Half of the tracks were brief processed vocal snippets sung by Belew, and the songs themselves varied between gamelan pop, Soundscapes and slightly parodic takes on heavy metal and blues.
The Power to Believe (2003)
The two EPs both acted as work-in-progress reveals for King Crimson’s 2003 album The Power to BelieveThe Power to Believe
The Power to Believe is an album by the band King Crimson released in 2003, a companion to the preceding mini-album Happy With What You Have to Be Happy With ....
, which Fripp described as "the culmination of three years of Crimsonising" and which was possibly the most self-referential album of the band’s career. The album incorporated reworked and/or retitled versions of “Deception of the Thrush” and four of the EP tracks, plus a 1997 Soundscape with added instrumentation and vocals, and also used lyrics from an Adrian Belew solo song (“All Her Love Is Mine”) as a linking theme across four songs. It did, however, confirm the band’s return to more diverse songwriting and instrumentation, with a greater reliance on space and Soundscapes and with Mastelotto using more ProjeKCt-style percussion textures. Songs such as “EleKtrik” fused 1970s, 1980s and 21st century Crimson styles, and the album ran the gamut from metal to ambient. Once again, the band toured to support the album, resulting in the 2003 live album EleKtrik: Live in Japan
EleKtrik: Live in Japan
EleKtrik: Live in Japan is a live album by the band King Crimson, released in 2003.-Track listing:#"Introductory Soundscape" – 5:05#"The Power to Believe " – 0:41...
, recorded in Tokyo.
In late November 2003, Trey Gunn
Trey Gunn
Trey Gunn is an American musician, known for his membership in progressive rock band King Crimson from 1994 to 2003, playing Warr Guitar and Chapman Stick.-Biography:...
announced his departure from King Crimson. He would continue his active association with Mastelotto in projects such as TU
TU (band)
TU is a band formed by Trey Gunn and Pat Mastelotto. They released one eponymous album in 2003.They opened for Tool on its 10,000 days tour on a few dates.-Track listing:#"Untamed Chicken"#"Absinthe & a Cracker"#"The NOOOSE"#"XTCU2"...
and KTU
KTU (band)
KTU is a progressive/experimental musical supergroup. In 2004 Trey Gunn and Pat Mastelotto started collaborating with Kimmo Pohjonen and Samuli Kosminen, forming KTU out of their respective duos TU and Kluster.-History:...
, as well as leading his own band. Tony Levin was subsequently reinstalled as King Crimson’s bass player, reconvening with Fripp, Belew and Mastelotto for rehearsals in early 2004.
Hiatus and related projects (2004–2007)
Porcupine Tree
Porcupine Tree is a progressive rock band formed by Steven Wilson in 1987 in Hemel Hempstead, Hertfordshire, England. Their music is difficult to categorise, being associated with both psychedelic rock and progressive rock, yet having been influenced by trance, krautrock and ambient due to Steven...
King Crimson, line-up 7 (2007–2009)
A new King Crimson line-up was announced in late 2007, consisting of Fripp, Belew, Levin, Mastelotto, and a new second drummer – Gavin HarrisonGavin Harrison
Gavin Harrison is a British drummer and percussionist. He is best known for playing with the British progressive rock band Porcupine Tree which he joined in 2002. As of 2008, he also plays with the band King Crimson....
(the band’s first new British member since 1972). Although best known as the drummer for Porcupine Tree
Porcupine Tree
Porcupine Tree is a progressive rock band formed by Steven Wilson in 1987 in Hemel Hempstead, Hertfordshire, England. Their music is difficult to categorise, being associated with both psychedelic rock and progressive rock, yet having been influenced by trance, krautrock and ambient due to Steven...
(a position he continues to hold alongside his King Crimson work), Harrison had a formidable reputation as one of the best session drummers in the music industry and had had a long career including work with Level 42
Level 42
Level 42 are an English pop rock and jazz-funk band who had a number of worldwide and UK hits during the 1980s and 1990s.The band gained fame for their high-calibre musicianship—in particular that of Mark King, whose percussive slap-bass guitar technique provided the driving groove of many of the...
, The Lodge
The Lodge (band)
The Lodge were a 1980s British/Welsh/American art-rock band based in New York, but performing mainly in Europe, which briefly united members of Henry Cow, Slapp Happy, Art Bears and Golden Palominos . It was centred primarily around Peter Blegvad and John Greaves, and drew strongly on their...
, Jakko Jakszyk
Jakko Jakszyk
Jakko M. Jakszyk is an English guitarist, singer-songwriter , multi-instrumentalist and producer...
, Sam Brown and innumerable others.
The new five-man line-up began rehearsals in spring 2008. In August of the same year, the band set out on a brief four-city tour in preparation for the group's 40th Anniversary in 2009. Live, the band revealed an increasingly drum-centric direction but no new material or any extended improvisations. However, many of the pieces from the back catalogue received striking new arrangements, most notably the renditions of "Neurotica," "Sleepless," and "Level Five", all of which were given percussion-heavy overhauls, presumably to highlight the return to the dual-drummer format.
On 20 August 2008, DGMLive issued a download-only release of the 7 August 2008 concert in Chicago. More rehearsals and shows had been intended for 2009, but these were cancelled following scheduling clashes with various members' other projects and developments with Fripp's own priorities.
Hiatus and related projects (2009–present)
Following the cancellation of the 2009 tour, King Crimson went on another hiatus pending further developments (in particular Fripp's ongoing litigation against King Crimson's outstanding debtorDebtor
A debtor is an entity that owes a debt to someone else. The entity may be an individual, a firm, a government, a company or other legal person. The counterparty is called a creditor...
s, as well as his attempts to settle his own financial debts and organise his personal life). During 2009 and 2010, Belew revealed in various interviews that he had discussed reactivating King Crimson with Fripp but that the band was "on leave right now for an indeterminate amount of time..." In June 2010, Belew suggested reuniting the 1980s King Crimson line-up of himself, Fripp, Tony Levin and Bill Bruford for a 30th anniversary tour (while also stating that this did not constitute a rejection of Mastelotto or Harrison as current King Crimson drummers).). The reunion idea was politely turned down by Bruford and Fripp, with the former commenting that "it’s precisely because I loved the '80s band so much that I would be highly unlikely to try to recreate the same thing, a mission I fear destined to failure." while the latter pleaded commitment to other activities (using the expression "rather than saying no, I can't say yes") and commented that he would "rather spend his energies toward new (King Crimson) music, although not in the near future."
On December 5, 2010, Fripp wrote a diary entry on his DGM website outlining his current stage of involvement in the music industry. The diary entry suggested that the King Crimson "switch" had been set to "off" and detailed a number of reasons why he was not currently interested in performing or writing with the band. In spite of this, activity related to the band continues. A separate band based around Jakko Jakszyk
Jakko Jakszyk
Jakko M. Jakszyk is an English guitarist, singer-songwriter , multi-instrumentalist and producer...
and King Crimson alumni Robert Fripp
Robert Fripp
Robert Fripp is an English guitarist, composer and record producer. He was ranked 42nd on Rolling Stone magazine's 2003 list of the "100 Greatest Guitarists of All Time" and #47 on Gibson.com’s "Top 50 Guitarists of All Time". Among rock guitarists, Fripp is a master of crosspicking, a technique...
and Mel Collins
Mel Collins
Mel Collins is a British saxophonist and flautist and session musician.He has worked in a wide variety of contexts ranging from R&B and blues rock to jazz, but is perhaps known for his work in progressive rock, as with King Crimson, Camel and the Alan Parsons Project.-Career:Collins has worked...
(who played last with King Crimson on Red
Red (King Crimson album)
Red is a 1974 album by progressive rock group King Crimson.It was their last studio recording of the 1970s and the last before the lead member Robert Fripp temporarily disbanded the group....
) was announced in 2011 as being called "A King Crimson ProjeKct". Fripp has also referred to it as "P7". An album A Scarcity of Miracles
A Scarcity of Miracles
A Scarcity of Miracles is an album by Jakszyk, Fripp and Collins. It unites current/former King Crimson musicians Robert Fripp and Mel Collins with singer-songwriter and guitarist Jakko Jakszyk A Scarcity of Miracles is an album by Jakszyk, Fripp and Collins. It unites current/former King Crimson...
features these three musicians, along with other Crimson alumni Tony Levin and Gavin Harrison.
21st Century Schizoid Band and other spin-offs
The 2000s also saw the reunion of former King Crimson members from the band's first four albums. The 21st Century Schizoid Band21st Century Schizoid Band
21st Century Schizoid Band are a King Crimson alumnus group formed in 2002.The name derives from the famous song "21st Century Schizoid Man" from the first King Crimson album, In the Court of the Crimson King...
(fronted by Jakko Jakszyk
Jakko Jakszyk
Jakko M. Jakszyk is an English guitarist, singer-songwriter , multi-instrumentalist and producer...
and featuring Ian McDonald
Ian McDonald (musician)
Ian McDonald is an English multi-instrumental musician, best known as a founding member of progressive rock group King Crimson, formed in 1969, and of the hard rock band Foreigner in 1976. He is well-known as a rock session musician, predominantly as a saxophonist...
, Mel Collins
Mel Collins
Mel Collins is a British saxophonist and flautist and session musician.He has worked in a wide variety of contexts ranging from R&B and blues rock to jazz, but is perhaps known for his work in progressive rock, as with King Crimson, Camel and the Alan Parsons Project.-Career:Collins has worked...
, Peter Giles and Michael Giles
Michael Giles
Michael Giles is an English drummer, best known as a co-founder of King Crimson in 1969...
– the latter later replaced by Ian Wallace
Ian Wallace (drummer)
Ian Russell Wallace was a rock and jazz drummer, most visible as a member of progressive rock band, King Crimson from 1971 to 1972; but known best in the musical community with his contributions as a session musician on his drum kit.-Early years:Wallace formed his first band, The Jaguars, at...
) toured and played material from the band's 1960s and 1970s catalogue.
In September 2008, a line-up called Crimson Project with Adrian Belew, Tony Levin, Pat Mastelotto, Eddie Jobson
Eddie Jobson
Edwin "Eddie" Jobson is an English keyboardist and violinist noted for his use of synthesizers. He has been a member of several progressive rock bands, including Curved Air, Roxy Music, U.K., and Jethro Tull. He was also part of Frank Zappa's band in 1976-77...
and Eric Slick (from the Adrian Belew Power Trio) played a short set at a Russian festival.
Music sourced from outside the rock canon
The band's music was initially grounded in the rock of the 1960s, especially the acid rockAcid rock
Acid rock is a form of psychedelic rock, which is characterized with long instrumental solos, few lyrics and musical improvisation. Tom Wolfe describes the LSD-influenced music of The Jimi Hendrix Experience, Pink Floyd, The Doors, Iron Butterfly, Big Brother & The Holding Company, Cream,...
and psychedelic rock
Psychedelic rock
Psychedelic rock is a style of rock music that is inspired or influenced by psychedelic culture and attempts to replicate and enhance the mind-altering experiences of psychedelic drugs. It emerged during the mid 1960s among folk rock and blues rock bands in United States and the United Kingdom...
movements. The band played Donovan
Donovan
Donovan Donovan Donovan (born Donovan Philips Leitch (born 10 May 1946) is a Scottish singer-songwriter and guitarist. Emerging from the British folk scene, he developed an eclectic and distinctive style that blended folk, jazz, pop, psychedelia, and world music...
's "Get Thy Bearings" in concert, and were known to play The Beatles
The Beatles
The Beatles were an English rock band, active throughout the 1960s and one of the most commercially successful and critically acclaimed acts in the history of popular music. Formed in Liverpool, by 1962 the group consisted of John Lennon , Paul McCartney , George Harrison and Ringo Starr...
' "Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds
Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds
"Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds" is a song written primarily by John Lennon and credited to Lennon–McCartney, for The Beatles' 1967 album Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band...
" in their rehearsals. However, for their own compositions, King Crimson (unlike the rock bands that had come before them) largely stripped away the blues
Blues
Blues is the name given to both a musical form and a music genre that originated in African-American communities of primarily the "Deep South" of the United States at the end of the 19th century from spirituals, work songs, field hollers, shouts and chants, and rhymed simple narrative ballads...
-based foundations of rock music and replaced them with influences derived from classical
Classical music
Classical music is the art music produced in, or rooted in, the traditions of Western liturgical and secular music, encompassing a broad period from roughly the 11th century to present times...
composers. The first incarnation of King Crimson played the Mars section of Gustav Holst
Gustav Holst
Gustav Theodore Holst was an English composer. He is most famous for his orchestral suite The Planets....
's suite The Planets
The Planets
The Planets, Op. 32, is a seven-movement orchestral suite by the English composer Gustav Holst, written between 1914 and 1916. Each movement of the suite is named after a planet of the Solar System and its corresponding astrological character as defined by Holst...
as a regular part of their live set and Fripp has frequently cited the influence of Béla Bartók
Béla Bartók
Béla Viktor János Bartók was a Hungarian composer and pianist. He is considered one of the most important composers of the 20th century and is regarded, along with Liszt, as Hungary's greatest composer...
. As a result of this influence, In the Court of the Crimson King
In the Court of the Crimson King
In the Court of the Crimson King is the 1969 debut album by the British progressive rock group King Crimson. The album reached No. 5 on the British charts, and is certified gold in the United States....
is frequently viewed as the nominal starting point of the symphonic rock
Symphonic rock
Symphonic rock is a sub-genre of progressive rock. Since early in progressive rock's history, the term has been used sometimes to distinguish more classically influenced progressive rock from the more psychedelic and experimental forms of progressive rock....
or progressive rock
Progressive rock
Progressive rock is a subgenre of rock music that developed in the late 1960s and early 1970s as part of a "mostly British attempt to elevate rock music to new levels of artistic credibility." John Covach, in Contemporary Music Review, says that many thought it would not just "succeed the pop of...
movements. From its earliest years King Crimson also initially displayed strong jazz
Jazz
Jazz is a musical style that originated at the beginning of the 20th century in African American communities in the Southern United States. It was born out of a mix of African and European music traditions. From its early development until the present, jazz has incorporated music from 19th and 20th...
influences, most obviously on its signature track "21st Century Schizoid Man
21st Century Schizoid Man
"21st Century Schizoid Man" is a song by progressive rock band King Crimson from their debut album In the Court of the Crimson King.-Personnel:* Greg Lake – Vocals, bass guitar* Ian McDonald – saxophone* Robert Fripp – guitars* Michael Giles – drums...
". The band also drew on English folk music
Folk music
Folk music is an English term encompassing both traditional folk music and contemporary folk music. The term originated in the 19th century. Traditional folk music has been defined in several ways: as music transmitted by mouth, as music of the lower classes, and as music with unknown composers....
for compositions such as "Moonchild
Moonchild (King Crimson song)
"Moonchild" is the fourth track from the British progressive rock band King Crimson's debut album, In the Court of the Crimson King.The first section, "The Dream", is a mellotron-driven ballad, but after two and a half minutes it changes to a completely free-form instrumental improvisation by the...
" and "I Talk to the Wind
I Talk to the Wind
"I Talk to the Wind" is the second track from the British progressive rock band King Crimson's debut album, In the Court of the Crimson King....
".
The 1981 reunion of the band brought in even more elements, displaying the influence of gamelan
Gamelan
A gamelan is a musical ensemble from Indonesia, typically from the islands of Bali or Java, featuring a variety of instruments such as metallophones, xylophones, drums and gongs; bamboo flutes, bowed and plucked strings. Vocalists may also be included....
music and of late 20th century classical composers such as Philip Glass
Philip Glass
Philip Glass is an American composer. He is considered to be one of the most influential composers of the late 20th century and is widely acknowledged as a composer who has brought art music to the public .His music is often described as minimalist, along with...
, Steve Reich
Steve Reich
Stephen Michael "Steve" Reich is an American composer who together with La Monte Young, Terry Riley, and Philip Glass is a pioneering composer of minimal music...
, and Terry Riley
Terry Riley
Terrence Mitchell Riley, is an American composer intrinsically associated with the minimalist school of Western classical music and was a pioneer of the movement...
. For its 1994 reunion, King Crimson reassessed both the mid-1970s and 1980s approaches in the light of new technology, intervening music forms such as grunge
Grunge
Grunge is a subgenre of alternative rock that emerged during the mid-1980s in the American state of Washington, particularly in the Seattle area. Inspired by hardcore punk, heavy metal, and indie rock, grunge is generally characterized by heavily distorted electric guitars, contrasting song...
, and further developments in industrial music
Industrial music
Industrial music is a style of experimental music that draws on transgressive and provocative themes. The term was coined in the mid-1970s with the founding of Industrial Records by the band Throbbing Gristle, and the creation of the slogan "industrial music for industrial people". In general, the...
, as well as expanding the band's ambient textural content via Fripp's Soundscapes looping approach.
Compositional approaches
Several King Crimson compositional approaches have remained constant from the earliest versions of the band to the present. These include:- the use of a gradually building rhythmic motif. These include "The Devil's Triangle" (an adaptation and variation on the Gustav HolstGustav HolstGustav Theodore Holst was an English composer. He is most famous for his orchestral suite The Planets....
piece Mars played by the original King Crimson, based on a complex pulse in 5/4 time over which a skirling melody is played MellotronMellotronThe Mellotron is an electro-mechanical, polyphonic tape replay keyboard originally developed and built in Birmingham, England in the early 1960s. It superseded the Chamberlin Music Master, which was the world's first sample-playback keyboard intended for music...
), 1972's "The Talking Drum" (from Larks' Tongues in Aspic), 1984's "Industry" (from Three of a Perfect Pair) and 2003's "Dangerous Curves" (from The Power to Believe and the Level Five EP). - an instrumental piece (often embedded as a break in a song) in which the band plays an ensemble passage of considerable rhythmic and polyrhythmPolyrhythmPolyrhythm is the simultaneous sounding of two or more independent rhythms.Polyrhythm in general is a nonspecific term for the simultaneous occurrence of two or more conflicting rhythms, of which cross-rhythm is a specific and definable subset.—Novotney Polyrhythms can be distinguished from...
ic complexity. An early example is the band's initial signature tune "21st Century Schizoid Man21st Century Schizoid Man"21st Century Schizoid Man" is a song by progressive rock band King Crimson from their debut album In the Court of the Crimson King.-Personnel:* Greg Lake – Vocals, bass guitar* Ian McDonald – saxophone* Robert Fripp – guitars* Michael Giles – drums...
", but the Larks' Tongues in Aspic series of compositions (as well as pieces of similar intent such as "THRaK" and "Level Five") go deeper into polyrhythmic complexity, delving into rhythms that wander into and out of general synchronisation with each other, but that all 'finish' together through polyrhythmic synchronisation. These polyrhythms were particularly abundant in the band's 1980s work, which contained gamelan-like rhythmic layers and continual overlaid staccatoStaccatoStaccato is a form of musical articulation. In modern notation it signifies a note of shortened duration and separated from the note that may follow by silence...
patterns in counterpoint. - the composition of difficult solo passages for individual instruments, such as the guitar break on "Fracture" on Starless and Bible Black.
- pieces with a loud, aggressive sound akin to heavy metal musicHeavy metal musicHeavy metal is a genre of rock music that developed in the late 1960s and early 1970s, largely in the Midlands of the United Kingdom and the United States...
. - the juxtaposition of ornate tunes and ballads with unusual, often dissonant noises (such as "Cirkus" on Lizard, "Ladies of the Road" from Islands and "Eyes Wide Open" from The Power to Believe).
- the use of improvisation.
- Ascending note structure (i.e. "Facts of Life", "Thrak")
Improvisation
King Crimson have incorporated improvisation into their performancesConcert
A concert is a live performance before an audience. The performance may be by a single musician, sometimes then called a recital, or by a musical ensemble, such as an orchestra, a choir, or a musical band...
and studio recordings from the beginning, some of which has been embedded into loosely-composed pieces such as "Moonchild
Moonchild (King Crimson song)
"Moonchild" is the fourth track from the British progressive rock band King Crimson's debut album, In the Court of the Crimson King.The first section, "The Dream", is a mellotron-driven ballad, but after two and a half minutes it changes to a completely free-form instrumental improvisation by the...
" or "THRaK". Most of the band's performances over the years have included at least one stand-alone improvisation where the band simply started playing and took the music wherever it went, sometimes including passages of restrained silence, as with Bill Bruford's contribution to the improvised "Trio". The earliest example of an unambiguously improvising King Crimson on record is the spacious, oft-criticised extended coda of "Moonchild" from In the Court of the Crimson King.
Rather than using the standard jazz or blues "jamming
Jam session
Jam sessions are often used by musicians to develop new material, find suitable arrangements, or simply as a social gathering and communal practice session. Jam sessions may be based upon existing songs or forms, may be loosely based on an agreed chord progression or chart suggested by one...
" format for improvisation (in which one soloist at a time takes centre stage while the rest of the band lies back and plays along with established rhythm and chord changes), King Crimson improvisation is a group affair in which each member of the band is able to make creative decisions and contributions as the music is being played. Individual soloing is largely eschewed; each musician is to listen to each other and to the group sound, to be able to react creatively within the group dynamic. A slightly similar method of continuous improvisation ("everybody solos and nobody solos") was initially used by King Crimson's jazz-fusion contemporaries Weather Report
Weather Report
Weather Report was an American jazz-rock band of the 1970s and early 1980s. The band was co-led by the Austrian-born keyboard player Joe Zawinul and the American saxophonist Wayne Shorter...
. Fripp has used the metaphor of "white magic
White Magic
White Magic may refer to:* White magic, healing or "good," as opposed to Black magic; see also magic * White Magic , an American rock band* White Magic , album by Swedish musician ceo...
" to describe this process, in particular when the method works particularly well.
Similarly, King Crimson's improvised music is rarely jazz or blues-based, and varies so much in sound that the band has been able to release several albums consisting entirely of improvised music, such as the Thrakattak album. Occasionally, particular improvised pieces will be recalled and reworked in different forms at different shows, becoming more and more refined and eventually appearing on official studio
Studio album
A studio album is an album made up of tracks recorded in the controlled environment of a recording studio. A studio album contains newly written and recorded or previously unreleased or remixed material, distinguishing itself from a compilation or reissue album of previously recorded material, or...
releases (the most recent example being "Power to Believe III", which originally existed as the stage improvisation "Deception of the Thrush", a piece played onstage for a long time before appearing on record).
Influence on other bands
King Crimson have been influential both on the early 1970s progressive rock movement and numerous contemporary artists.- First-wave progressive rock bands such as GenesisGenesis (band)Genesis are an English rock band that formed in 1967. The band currently comprises the longest-tenured members Tony Banks , Mike Rutherford and Phil Collins . Past members Peter Gabriel , Steve Hackett and Anthony Phillips , also played major roles in the band in its early years...
and YesYes (band)Yes are an English rock band who achieved worldwide success with their progressive, art, and symphonic style of rock music. Regarded as one of the pioneers of the progressive genre, Yes are known for their lengthy songs, mystical lyrics, elaborate album art, and live stage sets...
were directly influenced by the band's initial style of symphonic mellotron rock, and many King Crimson band members went on to other notable bands: Greg Lake to Emerson, Lake & PalmerEmerson, Lake & PalmerEmerson, Lake & Palmer, also known as ELP, are an English progressive rock supergroup. They found success in the 1970s and sold over forty million albums and headlined large stadium concerts. The band consists of Keith Emerson , Greg Lake and Carl Palmer...
; Ian Mcdonald to co-found ForeignerForeigner (band)Foreigner is a British-American rock band, originally formed in 1976 by veteran English musicians Mick Jones and ex-King Crimson member Ian McDonald along with American vocalist Lou Gramm...
; Boz Burrell to Bad Company and John Wetton to the supergroups UKUK (band)U.K. were a short-lived British progressive rock supergroup active from 1977 until 1980.The band was composed of Singer/Bassist John Wetton, formerly of King Crimson, Bryan Ferry's band and Uriah Heep, Keyboardist/Electric Violinist Eddie Jobson, formerly of Curved Air, Roxy Music and Frank Zappa's...
and AsiaAsia (band)Asia are an English rock group formed in 1981. The band was labelled a supergroup as it included former members of several veteran progressive rock bands, namely John Wetton , Geoff Downes , Steve Howe and Carl Palmer Asia are an English rock group formed in 1981. The band was labelled a...
(the latter of which also drew members from Yes, ELP, and The Buggles). Some aspects of the work of Emerson, Lake & PalmerEmerson, Lake & PalmerEmerson, Lake & Palmer, also known as ELP, are an English progressive rock supergroup. They found success in the 1970s and sold over forty million albums and headlined large stadium concerts. The band consists of Keith Emerson , Greg Lake and Carl Palmer...
can be seen as Greg LakeGreg LakeGregory Stuart "Greg" Lake is an English musician, songwriter and producer, best known as a vocalist and bassist of King Crimson, and the bassist, guitarist, vocalist, and lyricist of Emerson, Lake & Palmer.-1960s: King Crimson:...
's attempt to continue the early work of King Crimson. The veteran Canadian hard rock/progressive rock band RushRush (band)Rush is a Canadian rock band formed in August 1968, in the Willowdale neighbourhood of Toronto, Ontario. The band is composed of bassist, keyboardist, and lead vocalist Geddy Lee, guitarist Alex Lifeson, and drummer and lyricist Neil Peart...
cites King Crimson as a strong early influence on their sound (drummer Neil Peart specifically credits the adventurous and innovative style of original King Crimson drummer Michael Giles as a very important influence on his own approach to percussion). - Latterday progressive rock bands also cite King Crimson as an influence. These include Porcupine TreePorcupine TreePorcupine Tree is a progressive rock band formed by Steven Wilson in 1987 in Hemel Hempstead, Hertfordshire, England. Their music is difficult to categorise, being associated with both psychedelic rock and progressive rock, yet having been influenced by trance, krautrock and ambient due to Steven...
who, as with Tool, have invited King Crimson (this time, in the form of ProjeKct Six) to play as their support band. Progressive/heavy metal rock band Between the Buried and MeBetween the Buried and MeBetween the Buried and Me is an American heavy metal band from Raleigh, North Carolina. They have released a total of five studio albums, as well as a cover album, an EP and a live DVD/CD...
are heavily influenced by King Crimson, covering the song "Three of a Perfect PairThree of a Perfect PairThree of a Perfect Pair is an album by the band King Crimson, released in 1984. The album is the culmination of the band's 80s period and is a balance between the experimental sounds of the "Red" album, Discipline, and the accessibility of the "Blue" album, Beat. Robert Fripp and Adrian Belew took...
" on their 2006 album The Anatomy OfThe Anatomy OfThe Anatomy Of is the first cover album by the American progressive metal band Between the Buried and Me. It is the second release to include Dan Briggs, Blake Richardson, and Dustie Waring.-Track listing:-Reception:*Allmusic [ link]*Lambgoat...
, as are PrimusPrimus (band)Primus is an American rock band based in San Francisco, California, currently composed of bassist/vocalist Les Claypool, guitarist Larry "Ler" LaLonde and drummer Jay Lane. Primus originally formed in 1984 with Claypool and guitarist Todd Huth, later joined by Lane, though the latter two departed...
, whose Les Claypool routinely opened his 2002 tour concerts of Colonel Les Claypool's Fearless Flying Frog BrigadeColonel Les Claypool's Fearless Flying Frog BrigadeColonel Les Claypool's Fearless Flying Frog Brigade is one of many musical projects involving Primus bassist Les Claypool. The original band was formed in summer 2000 and consisted of: Les Claypool , Todd Huth , Jay Lane , Jeff Chimenti , Skerik , and Eenor...
with a cover of the song Thela Hun GinjeetThela Hun GinjeetThela Hun Ginjeet is a single by the band King Crimson, released in 1981. Its tracks are from the album Discipline . The song name is an anagram of "heat in the jungle", which is a reference to crime in the city...
. Progressive metal band Dream TheaterDream TheaterDream Theater is an American progressive metal band formed in 1985 under the name Majesty by John Petrucci, John Myung, and Mike Portnoy while they attended Berklee College of Music in Massachusetts. They subsequently dropped out of their studies to further concentrate on the band that would...
included a cover of King Crimson's "Larks Tongues In Aspic, Pt. 2" on disk 2 of the special edition of their 2009 release, Black Clouds & Silver LiningsBlack Clouds & Silver LiningsBlack Clouds & Silver Linings is the tenth studio album by American progressive metal band Dream Theater, released on June 23, 2009 through Roadrunner Records. It is the band's last album to feature drummer and founding member Mike Portnoy before his departure on September 8, 2010. The album was...
. - King Crimson's influence extends to alternative rock bands of the 1990s and 2000s. NirvanaNirvana (band)Nirvana was an American rock band that was formed by singer/guitarist Kurt Cobain and bassist Krist Novoselic in Aberdeen, Washington in 1987...
are known to have been influenced by King Crimson as a result of Kurt CobainKurt CobainKurt Donald Cobain was an American singer-songwriter, musician and artist, best known as the lead singer and guitarist of the grunge band Nirvana...
having mentioned the importance of the Red album to him. ToolTool (band)Tool is an American rock band from Los Angeles, California. Formed in 1990, the group's line-up has included drummer Danny Carey, guitarist Adam Jones, and vocalist Maynard James Keenan. Since 1995, Justin Chancellor has been the band's bassist, replacing their original bassist Paul D'Amour...
are widely held to have been heavily influenced by King Crimson, with their vocalist Maynard James KeenanMaynard James KeenanMaynard James Keenan is an American rock singer, songwriter, musician, record producer, winemaker, and actor. Originally from Ohio, Keenan spent his high school and college years in Michigan. After serving in the Army in the early 1980s, he attended Kendall College of Art and Design in Grand Rapids...
even joking on a tour with them that "Now you know who we ripped off. Just don't tell anyone, especially the members of King Crimson." Los Angeles punk band Bad ReligionBad ReligionBad Religion is a punk rock band that formed in Los Angeles in 1979. Their current line-up consists of Greg Graffin , Brett Gurewitz , Jay Bentley , Greg Hetson , Brian Baker and Brooks Wackerman . Gurewitz is also the founder of the label Epitaph Records, which has released almost all of the...
quotes the lyrics of "21st Century Schizoid Man" in their hit single 21st Century (Digital Boy)21st Century (Digital Boy)"21st Century " is a song by the punk rock group Bad Religion. It was originally recorded in 1990 on their fifth full-length studio album Against the Grain and rerecorded on the 1994 album Stranger Than Fiction...
. Steve Steele, mentioned in an interview that King Crimson was a prime influence on his songwriting and arrangements, and in a biographyBiographyA biography is a detailed description or account of someone's life. More than a list of basic facts , biography also portrays the subject's experience of those events...
, he cites that other than traditional literary sources, Richard Palmer-James (King Crimson's lyricist from 1972–1974), is one of the only lyricist he credits as having a personal impact. - King Crimson have frequently been cited as pioneers of progressive metalProgressive metalProgressive metal is a subgenre of heavy metal originating in the United Kingdom and North America in the late 1980s...
. Members of both Iron MaidenIron MaidenIron Maiden are an English heavy metal band from Leyton in east London, formed in 1975 by bassist and primary songwriter Steve Harris. Since their inception, the band's discography has grown to include a total of thirty-six albums: fifteen studio albums; eleven live albums; four EPs; and six...
and MudvayneMudvayneMudvayne is an American heavy metal band. Their work is marked by the use of sonic experimentation, innovative album art, and elaborate visual appearance, which has included face and body paint, masks and uniforms...
have cited King Crimson as an influence. The angular, dissonant guitar patterns associated with Fripp’s distinctive approach are also evident in the music of Thrash-Metal pioneers VoivodVoivod (band)Voivod are a Canadian heavy metal band from Jonquière, Quebec, Canada. Their musical style has changed several times since the band's origin in the early 1980s...
, especially in the band’s mid-period work. Voivod also did a cover of "21st Century Schizoid Man" on their 1997 recording Phobos. - King Crimson have also provided source material and inspiration for hip-hop and dance music acts. Rap star Kanye West sampled King Crimson's "21st Century Schizoid Man" on his 2010 single "Power" and British hip-hoppers The Brotherhood used a prominent sample from "Starless" to open their debut album. British technoTechnoTechno is a form of electronic dance music that emerged in Detroit, Michigan in the United States during the mid to late 1980s. The first recorded use of the word techno, in reference to a genre of music, was in 1988...
/house musicHouse musicHouse music is a genre of electronic dance music that originated in Chicago, Illinois, United States in the early 1980s. It was initially popularized in mid-1980s discothèques catering to the African-American, Latino American, and gay communities; first in Chicago circa 1984, then in other...
act Opus IIIOpus IIIOpus III were a techno and house music group from England who had success on the UK Singles Chart and on the U.S. Dance charts. The group consisted of vocalist Kirsty Hawkshaw and producers/musicians Kevin 'The Fly' Dodds, Ian Munro and Nigel 'Spider' Walton...
covered "I Talk to the Wind" on their 1992 album Mind Fruit and released the track as a single.
Membership
King Crimson has had 18 musicians pass through its ranks as full band members. Many others have collaborated with the band at various points in lyric-writing, the studio and in live performance. Most of the musicians who have been members of King Crimson had notable musical careers outside the band, to the extent that it has been calculated that there are over fifteen-hundred releases on which members and former members of King Crimson appear.Leadership
Robert Fripp has been the sole consistent member of King Crimson throughout the group’s history. He has stated that he does not necessarily consider himself the band's leader and instead describes King Crimson as "a way of doing things". Fripp has also noted that he never originally intended to be seen as the head of the group. However, Fripp has strongly dominated the band’s musical approach and compositional approach since their second album (albeit with other members tending to write the more song-oriented elements, to the point where other members have left the band because of creative frustration – notably Ian McDonaldIan McDonald (musician)
Ian McDonald is an English multi-instrumental musician, best known as a founding member of progressive rock group King Crimson, formed in 1969, and of the hard rock band Foreigner in 1976. He is well-known as a rock session musician, predominantly as a saxophonist...
, Gordon Haskell
Gordon Haskell
Gordon Haskell is a Pop, Rock & Blues music vocalist, songwriter, and bassist. He first gained recognition as a member of the British band Les Fleur de Lys. He sang on one of the songs of King Crimson's second album, then played bass and sang on their third album...
and Mel Collins
Mel Collins
Mel Collins is a British saxophonist and flautist and session musician.He has worked in a wide variety of contexts ranging from R&B and blues rock to jazz, but is perhaps known for his work in progressive rock, as with King Crimson, Camel and the Alan Parsons Project.-Career:Collins has worked...
). Trey Gunn
Trey Gunn
Trey Gunn is an American musician, known for his membership in progressive rock band King Crimson from 1994 to 2003, playing Warr Guitar and Chapman Stick.-Biography:...
, who played with the group between 1994 and 2003, has stated that "King Crimson is Robert’s vision. Period."
Most recent lineup
King Crimson is currently on hiatus, and the lineup of the band when they return is unknown, the most recent lineup was:- Robert FrippRobert FrippRobert Fripp is an English guitarist, composer and record producer. He was ranked 42nd on Rolling Stone magazine's 2003 list of the "100 Greatest Guitarists of All Time" and #47 on Gibson.com’s "Top 50 Guitarists of All Time". Among rock guitarists, Fripp is a master of crosspicking, a technique...
— guitars, guitar synthesiser/MIDI guitar, SoundscapesSoundscapes by Robert FrippA musical style developed by guitarist Robert Fripp, involving the use of audio loops created and modified by a specific set of digital music synthesizers and digital audio processing devices....
, electric piano, Mellotron, keyboards, allsorts (1969–2009) - Adrian BelewAdrian BelewAdrian Belew is an American guitarist, singer, songwriter, multi-instrumentalist and record producer...
— lead vocals, guitars, guitar synthesiser/MIDI guitar, electronic percussion (1981–2009) - Tony LevinTony LevinTony Levin is an American progressive rock musician, specializing in bass guitar, Chapman stick and upright bass ....
— bass guitars, Chapman StickChapman StickThe Chapman Stick is an electric musical instrument devised by Emmett Chapman in the early 1970s. A member of the guitar family, the Chapman Stick usually has ten or twelve individually tuned strings and has been used on music recordings to play bass lines, melody lines, chords or textures...
, upright bass, synthesiser, backing vocals (1981–1999; 2003–2009) - Pat MastelottoPat MastelottoPat Mastelotto is a rock drummer who has worked with Mr. Mister and King Crimson, amongst others. For King Crimson he initially formed part of the "double trio" lineup, joining Bill Bruford on drums...
— acoustic and electronic drums and percussion (1994–2009) - Gavin HarrisonGavin HarrisonGavin Harrison is a British drummer and percussionist. He is best known for playing with the British progressive rock band Porcupine Tree which he joined in 2002. As of 2008, he also plays with the band King Crimson....
— drums (2007–2009)
These musicians were part of the most recent proper King Crimson formation, which went on hiatus in 2009, but only Fripp is listed as a formal part of the latest ProjeKct – Jakszyk/Fripp/Collins, featuring former 21st Century Schizoid Band
21st Century Schizoid Band
21st Century Schizoid Band are a King Crimson alumnus group formed in 2002.The name derives from the famous song "21st Century Schizoid Man" from the first King Crimson album, In the Court of the Crimson King...
frontman Jakko Jakszyk
Jakko Jakszyk
Jakko M. Jakszyk is an English guitarist, singer-songwriter , multi-instrumentalist and producer...
(vocals, guitars, keyboards), early-1970s King Crimson/21st Century Schizoid Band
21st Century Schizoid Band
21st Century Schizoid Band are a King Crimson alumnus group formed in 2002.The name derives from the famous song "21st Century Schizoid Man" from the first King Crimson album, In the Court of the Crimson King...
saxophonist and flautist Mel Collins
Mel Collins
Mel Collins is a British saxophonist and flautist and session musician.He has worked in a wide variety of contexts ranging from R&B and blues rock to jazz, but is perhaps known for his work in progressive rock, as with King Crimson, Camel and the Alan Parsons Project.-Career:Collins has worked...
, and Fripp on guitar and Soundscapes (Levin and Harrison perform as the guest rhythm section). Historically, absence from a ProjeKct has not precluded a musician from continued participation in the next proper formation of King Crimson, although a ProjeKCt member or two typically drops off before the next formal King Crimson line-up is announced. Therefore it is, at current, unknown as to who will be in King Crimson if/when they regroup, and whether it will be a continuation of the last known King Crimson lineup or the current ProjeKct.
Former members
- Peter SinfieldPeter SinfieldPeter John Sinfield is an English poet, lyricist and artist, most famously known as the lyricist and co-founding member of early incarnations of King Crimson, whose debut album In the Court of the Crimson King has been regarded as one of the most influential progressive rock albums ever...
— lyrics, synthesiser (1969–1971) - Greg LakeGreg LakeGregory Stuart "Greg" Lake is an English musician, songwriter and producer, best known as a vocalist and bassist of King Crimson, and the bassist, guitarist, vocalist, and lyricist of Emerson, Lake & Palmer.-1960s: King Crimson:...
— bass guitar, vocals and tambourine (1969–1970) - Michael GilesMichael GilesMichael Giles is an English drummer, best known as a co-founder of King Crimson in 1969...
— drums, vocals (1969–1970) - Ian McDonaldIan McDonald (musician)Ian McDonald is an English multi-instrumental musician, best known as a founding member of progressive rock group King Crimson, formed in 1969, and of the hard rock band Foreigner in 1976. He is well-known as a rock session musician, predominantly as a saxophonist...
— saxophone, clarinet, flute, mellotron, vibes, vocals (1969; 1974) - Gordon HaskellGordon HaskellGordon Haskell is a Pop, Rock & Blues music vocalist, songwriter, and bassist. He first gained recognition as a member of the British band Les Fleur de Lys. He sang on one of the songs of King Crimson's second album, then played bass and sang on their third album...
— bass guitar, vocals (1970) - Andy McCulloch — drums (1970)
- Boz BurrellBoz BurrellRaymond "Boz" Burrell was an English musician. Originally a vocalist, Burrell is best known for his bass playing and work with the rock bands King Crimson and Bad Company.-Career:...
— bass guitar, vocals (1971–1972) - Ian WallaceIan Wallace (drummer)Ian Russell Wallace was a rock and jazz drummer, most visible as a member of progressive rock band, King Crimson from 1971 to 1972; but known best in the musical community with his contributions as a session musician on his drum kit.-Early years:Wallace formed his first band, The Jaguars, at...
— drums, percussion, vocals (1971–1972) - Bill BrufordBill BrufordWilliam Scott "Bill" Bruford is an English drummer, percussionist, composer, producer, and record label owner. He was the original drummer for the progressive rock group Yes, from 1968-1972. Bruford has performed for numerous popular acts since the early 1970s, including a stint as touring...
— acoustic and electronic drums and percussion (1972–1998) - John WettonJohn WettonJohn Kenneth Wetton is an English bassist, guitarist, keyboardist, singer and songwriter. He was born in Willington, Derbyshire, and grew up in Bournemouth. He has been a professional musician since the late 1960s...
— bass guitar, vocals, occasional electric guitar and piano (1972–1974) - Richard Palmer-JamesRichard Palmer-JamesRichard Jeffrey Charles Palmer-James was lyricist for the progressive rock group King Crimson in the early 1970s....
— lyrics (1973–1974) - David CrossDavid Cross (musician)David Cross is an electric violinist born in Turnchapel near Plymouth, England, best known for playing with progressive rock band King Crimson during the 1970s...
— violin, viola, flute, mellotron, electric piano, keyboards (1972–1974) - Jamie MuirJamie MuirJamie Muir is a UK painter and former percussionist, best known for his work in King Crimson.-Biography:Muir attended Edinburgh College of Art during the 1960s and began playing jazz on trombone before settling on percussion....
— percussion, allsorts (1972–1973) - Trey GunnTrey GunnTrey Gunn is an American musician, known for his membership in progressive rock band King Crimson from 1994 to 2003, playing Warr Guitar and Chapman Stick.-Biography:...
— Warr guitar, Chapman StickChapman StickThe Chapman Stick is an electric musical instrument devised by Emmett Chapman in the early 1970s. A member of the guitar family, the Chapman Stick usually has ten or twelve individually tuned strings and has been used on music recordings to play bass lines, melody lines, chords or textures...
, baritone guitarBaritone guitarThe baritone guitar is a variation on the standard guitar, with a longer scale length that allows it to be tuned to a lower range. It first appeared in the classical music realm...
, Ashbory silicone-string bassAshbory bassThe Ashbory bass, designed by Alun Ashworth-Jones and Nigel Thornbory, is an 18-inch scale fretless electric bass developed in 1985. This scale is just over half of the 34-inch scale of an ordinary bass guitar...
, "talker" (1994–2003)
Additional/guest musicians and lyricists
- Peter Giles — bass guitar on In the Wake of Poseidon
- Keith TippettKeith TippettKeith Tippett is a British jazz pianist and composer.Tippett, the son of a local police officer, went to Greenway Boys Secondary Modern school in Southmead, Bristol. He formed his first jazz band called The KT7 whilst still at school and they performed numbers popular at the time by The Temperance...
— acoustic and electric pianos on In The Wake Of Poseidon, Lizard and Islands - Rick KempRick KempRick Kemp is an English bass player, songwriter, vocalist and record producer, best known for his work with the pioneering electric folk band, Steeleye Span.-Projects:...
— bass guitar, played for two weeks in band prior to recording of 'Islands' and Boz Burrell's hiring - Mark Charig — cornetCornetThe cornet is a brass instrument very similar to the trumpet, distinguished by its conical bore, compact shape, and mellower tone quality. The most common cornet is a transposing instrument in B. It is not related to the renaissance and early baroque cornett or cornetto.-History:The cornet was...
on Lizard, Islands and Red (from Keith Tippett Sextet and Centipede) - Nick EvansNick Evans (trombonist)Nicholas "Nick" Evans is a Welsh jazz and progressive rock trombonist.- Career :He worked in the Graham Collier Sextet , Keith Tippett Group , Soft Machine , Brotherhood of Breath , Centipede , Just Us , Ambush , Ninesense , Intercontinental Express , Ark Nicholas "Nick" Evans (born 1947 in...
— tromboneTromboneThe trombone is a musical instrument in the brass family. Like all brass instruments, sound is produced when the player’s vibrating lips cause the air column inside the instrument to vibrate...
on Lizard and Islands - Harry MillerHarry Miller (jazz bassist)Harold Simon 'Harry' Miller was a South African jazz bass player.Miller began his career as a bassist with Manfred Mann, and came to settle in London...
— double bassDouble bassThe double bass, also called the string bass, upright bass, standup bass or contrabass, is the largest and lowest-pitched bowed string instrument in the modern symphony orchestra, with strings usually tuned to E1, A1, D2 and G2...
on Islands - Robin Miller — oboeOboeThe oboe is a double reed musical instrument of the woodwind family. In English, prior to 1770, the instrument was called "hautbois" , "hoboy", or "French hoboy". The spelling "oboe" was adopted into English ca...
on Lizard, Islands and Red - Paulina Lucas—soprano vocals (Islands).
- Jon AndersonJon AndersonJon Anderson is an English singer-songwriter and musician best known as the former lead vocalist in the progressive rock band Yes...
— guest lead vocals on Lizard (from YesYes (band)Yes are an English rock band who achieved worldwide success with their progressive, art, and symphonic style of rock music. Regarded as one of the pioneers of the progressive genre, Yes are known for their lengthy songs, mystical lyrics, elaborate album art, and live stage sets...
) - Eddie JobsonEddie JobsonEdwin "Eddie" Jobson is an English keyboardist and violinist noted for his use of synthesizers. He has been a member of several progressive rock bands, including Curved Air, Roxy Music, U.K., and Jethro Tull. He was also part of Frank Zappa's band in 1976-77...
— violin and electric piano studio overdubs on USA - Margaret Belew—source text for "Indiscipline" (on Discipline) and lyrics for "Two Hands" (on Beat). (Margaret Belew was an artist and was also Adrian Belew's wife during the time of King Crimson line-up 4).
Personnel / album chart
| Formation | I | II | III | IV | V | P1 | P2 | P3 | P4 | PX ProjeKct X ProjeKct X was a side project of the music band King Crimson during the year 2000.In 2000, while the band King Crimson recorded their album The ConstruKction of Light, the four members of this line-up also recorded the album Heaven and Earth as ProjeKct X... |
VI | P6 | VII | P7 | |||||||
| Album | Court In the Court of the Crimson King In the Court of the Crimson King is the 1969 debut album by the British progressive rock group King Crimson. The album reached No. 5 on the British charts, and is certified gold in the United States.... |
Wake In the Wake of Poseidon In the Wake of Poseidon is the second album by the progressive rock group King Crimson. By the time this album was released, the band had already undergone their first change in line-up, however they still maintained much of the style of their first album, In the Court of the Crimson King.Greg Lake... |
Lizard Lizard (album) Lizard is the third album by the British band King Crimson, released in 1970. It was the second recorded by a transitional line-up of the group that never had the opportunity to perform live, following In the Wake of Poseidon... |
Islands Islands (King Crimson album) Islands is the fourth album by the British band King Crimson, released in 1971.The last King Crimson studio album before the group's trilogy of Larks' Tongues in Aspic, Starless and Bible Black and Red, it is also the last to feature the lyrics of Peter Sinfield and the last to feature the band's... |
Larks Larks' Tongues in Aspic Larks' Tongues in Aspic is the fifth studio album by the English progressive rock group King Crimson, originally released in 1973. This album is the debut of King Crimson's third incarnation - arguably their most forward-thinking thinking version yet, featuring original member and guitarist Robert... |
Starless Starless and Bible Black Starless and Bible Black is an album released by the British progressive rock band King Crimson in 1974. Most of the vocal pieces on the album are satires and commentaries on the sleaziness and materialism of society... |
Red Red (King Crimson album) Red is a 1974 album by progressive rock group King Crimson.It was their last studio recording of the 1970s and the last before the lead member Robert Fripp temporarily disbanded the group.... |
Discipline | Beat Beat (King Crimson album) Beat is an album by the British rock band King Crimson, released in 1982.Of King Crimson's thirteen studio albums, this is the only album that does not have a title track, although its title is included in the name of the song "Heartbeat".... |
Pair Three of a Perfect Pair Three of a Perfect Pair is an album by the band King Crimson, released in 1984. The album is the culmination of the band's 80s period and is a balance between the experimental sounds of the "Red" album, Discipline, and the accessibility of the "Blue" album, Beat. Robert Fripp and Adrian Belew took... |
THRAK THRAK THRAK is an album by the band King Crimson released in 1995, the successor to the preceding mini-album Vrooom . This album was recorded in the "double trio" format of King Crimson.-Track listing:... |
Space Space Groove Space Groove is the first and only studio album recorded by ProjeKct Two, a King Crimson fraKctal group. It was recorded at Studio Belewbeloible during November 19 - November 21, 1997.-Track list:Volume One: Space Groove# Space Groove II - 19:03... |
Heaven | ConstruKction The ConstruKction of Light The ConstruKction of Light is an album by the band King Crimson, released in 2000. It has the distinction of being the first studio album to be released by King Crimson without Bill Bruford on drums since prior to the release of Lark's Tongues in Aspic . It also in notable for the absence of Tony... |
Power The Power to Believe The Power to Believe is an album by the band King Crimson released in 2003, a companion to the preceding mini-album Happy With What You Have to Be Happy With .... |
Scarcity A Scarcity of Miracles A Scarcity of Miracles is an album by Jakszyk, Fripp and Collins. It unites current/former King Crimson musicians Robert Fripp and Mel Collins with singer-songwriter and guitarist Jakko Jakszyk A Scarcity of Miracles is an album by Jakszyk, Fripp and Collins. It unites current/former King Crimson... |
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| Guitar | Fripp | ||||||||||||||||||||
| Drums/Perx | Muir | Mastelotto | |||||||||||||||||||
| Drums/Perx | M. Giles | McCullough | Wallace | Bruford | Harrison | ||||||||||||||||
| Words | Sinfield | James | Belew | ||||||||||||||||||
| Guitar | Belew | Jakszyk | |||||||||||||||||||
| Vocals | Lake | Haskell | Burrell | Wetton | Belew | Jakszyk | |||||||||||||||
| Bass/Stick | Lake | P. Giles | Haskell | Burrell | Wetton | Levin | |||||||||||||||
| Warr Guitar | Gunn | ||||||||||||||||||||
| Woodwinds | McDonald | Collins | |||||||||||||||||||
| Keys/Mellotron | McDonald | Tippett | Cross | ||||||||||||||||||
| Violin | Cross | ||||||||||||||||||||
Discography
Studio albums- In the Court of the Crimson KingIn the Court of the Crimson KingIn the Court of the Crimson King is the 1969 debut album by the British progressive rock group King Crimson. The album reached No. 5 on the British charts, and is certified gold in the United States....
(1969) - In the Wake of PoseidonIn the Wake of PoseidonIn the Wake of Poseidon is the second album by the progressive rock group King Crimson. By the time this album was released, the band had already undergone their first change in line-up, however they still maintained much of the style of their first album, In the Court of the Crimson King.Greg Lake...
(1970) - LizardLizard (album)Lizard is the third album by the British band King Crimson, released in 1970. It was the second recorded by a transitional line-up of the group that never had the opportunity to perform live, following In the Wake of Poseidon...
(1970) - IslandsIslands (King Crimson album)Islands is the fourth album by the British band King Crimson, released in 1971.The last King Crimson studio album before the group's trilogy of Larks' Tongues in Aspic, Starless and Bible Black and Red, it is also the last to feature the lyrics of Peter Sinfield and the last to feature the band's...
(1971) - Larks' Tongues in AspicLarks' Tongues in AspicLarks' Tongues in Aspic is the fifth studio album by the English progressive rock group King Crimson, originally released in 1973. This album is the debut of King Crimson's third incarnation - arguably their most forward-thinking thinking version yet, featuring original member and guitarist Robert...
(1973) - Starless and Bible BlackStarless and Bible BlackStarless and Bible Black is an album released by the British progressive rock band King Crimson in 1974. Most of the vocal pieces on the album are satires and commentaries on the sleaziness and materialism of society...
(1974) - RedRed (King Crimson album)Red is a 1974 album by progressive rock group King Crimson.It was their last studio recording of the 1970s and the last before the lead member Robert Fripp temporarily disbanded the group....
(1974) - Discipline (1981)
- BeatBeat (King Crimson album)Beat is an album by the British rock band King Crimson, released in 1982.Of King Crimson's thirteen studio albums, this is the only album that does not have a title track, although its title is included in the name of the song "Heartbeat"....
(1982) - Three of a Perfect PairThree of a Perfect PairThree of a Perfect Pair is an album by the band King Crimson, released in 1984. The album is the culmination of the band's 80s period and is a balance between the experimental sounds of the "Red" album, Discipline, and the accessibility of the "Blue" album, Beat. Robert Fripp and Adrian Belew took...
(1984) - THRAKTHRAKTHRAK is an album by the band King Crimson released in 1995, the successor to the preceding mini-album Vrooom . This album was recorded in the "double trio" format of King Crimson.-Track listing:...
(1995) - The ConstruKction of LightThe ConstruKction of LightThe ConstruKction of Light is an album by the band King Crimson, released in 2000. It has the distinction of being the first studio album to be released by King Crimson without Bill Bruford on drums since prior to the release of Lark's Tongues in Aspic . It also in notable for the absence of Tony...
(2000) - The Power to BelieveThe Power to BelieveThe Power to Believe is an album by the band King Crimson released in 2003, a companion to the preceding mini-album Happy With What You Have to Be Happy With ....
(2003)
Reissues
In 1999, Robert Fripp collaborated with Virgin Records on a gradual reissue of the complete pre-1994 King Crimson catalogue. Various "definitive editions" followed.DGM has announced details of the first three reissues in the revamping of the King Crimson back catalogue, to be released in September and October 2009 as CD/DVDA editions. Steven Wilson
Steven Wilson
Steven John Wilson is an English musician, best known as the founder, lead guitarist, singer and songwriter of progressive rock band Porcupine Tree...
of Porcupine Tree
Porcupine Tree
Porcupine Tree is a progressive rock band formed by Steven Wilson in 1987 in Hemel Hempstead, Hertfordshire, England. Their music is difficult to categorise, being associated with both psychedelic rock and progressive rock, yet having been influenced by trance, krautrock and ambient due to Steven...
has been working on these over the past year, restoring the multi-track tapes from the best possible sources, remixing the albums into 5.1 surround sound, mixing unreleased tracks and alternate takes from the master tapes for the first time, and in some cases also creating new stereo mixes that enhance the sonics of the originals significantly. All of this work has been personally overseen by Robert Fripp, who also took part in the stereo remixing. The first three titles are Red, In the Court of the Crimson King (released as close to the exact 40th anniversary of its original release as possible), and Lizard. October 2010 saw reissues of In the Wake of Poseidon and Islands and October 2011 saw reissues of Starless and Bible Black and Discipline.
Further reissues in the works include THRAK
THRAK
THRAK is an album by the band King Crimson released in 1995, the successor to the preceding mini-album Vrooom . This album was recorded in the "double trio" format of King Crimson.-Track listing:...
, with engineering by Jakko Jakszyk, and Larks' Tongues in Aspic
Larks' Tongues in Aspic
Larks' Tongues in Aspic is the fifth studio album by the English progressive rock group King Crimson, originally released in 1973. This album is the debut of King Crimson's third incarnation - arguably their most forward-thinking thinking version yet, featuring original member and guitarist Robert...
.