Released: 1974
Tracks: The Great Deceiver; Lament; We’ll Let You Know; The Night Watch; Trio; The Mincer; Starless and Bible Black; Fracture
Best track: Fracture
Track to skip: none
This album shows a glimpse of how great a live band Crimson were back in 73/74. Most of this album was recorded live with a few overdubs. The sole studio tracks are the first two with Night Watch being a strange combination of 2 live performances and studio overdubs. In addition to all the live stuff, about half is all improv. We’ll Let You Know, Trio, The Mincer (minus the vocal overdub) and Starless are all live improvs. And in addition to that, about half of these songs are instrumentals. So, in whatever way you approach this album, it’s a pretty gutsy, as well as varied, album.
This has the same lineup as the Night Watch CD (Cross, Fripp, Wetton & Bruford) with Richard Palmer-James again on board to write the lyrics. As a ‘studio’ album, this blows the pants off Larks’ Tongues. This is a super meaty and very dark album. There are some lighter spots, like the gorgeous Trio and Night Watch as well as the goofy funk of We’ll Let You Know, but mostly it’s pretty dark. I think the title track is one of the most far-out Crimson songs ever. The highlight of this CD is Fracture. I’d say that this was the best KC composition up to this point. It’s an absolutely huge piece of music that shows off how talented of a guitarist and composer Robert Fripp is.
I love this album, all the way through. Even in the improvs there’s not a second of wasted time and they’re always engaging. This album is most likely considered to be self-indulgent by idiotic music critics, but I’d say it’s more ballsy than anything. Possibly one of the most ballsy Crimson albums as well. So, where does all that leave you? It leaves a great album (by anyone) and a great King Crimson album. The cool thing is, it only hints at how great a band this version of King Crimson was.
Rating: 93
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