We’ve skipped over a few iterations of King Crimson to land on a very different sound compared with Court Of The Crimson King. Of the original line-up, only Robert Fripp remains. Bill Bruford, formerly of Yes, joins on drums, looking for something more experimental than the direction that Yes were going. Vocals are now by John Wetton rather than Greg Lake, and the distinctive sound of this album come from the violin and flute of David Cross, and the percussion of Jamie Muir (credited with playing, among other things, “allsorts”).
There are more instrumentals on here than
songs, the album book-ended by Parts I and II of Lark’s Tongues In Aspic, probably
the most jazz/classic fusion pieces on here, driven by an urgent refrain that
occasionally breaks into a rock explosion, over which Cross plays violin, at
one point I’m sure he does a cheeky little echo of Vaughn-Williams' Lark
Ascending.
The most notable influence, especially
prevalent on The Talking Drum, is Eastern European music, with an ongoing drone
and Cross giving a Bartok-esque gypsy violin, sounding a bit like the end of
Baba O’Reilly played backwards. The track starts with a talking drum piece,
borrowing from West African culture (but not, I think, actually using a talking
drum/dondo etc.) but quickly becomes more Eastern Europeran folk/classic/rock.
Of the two pieces with vocals, Book Of
Saturdays is closest to the King Crimson of the first album, a soft romantic
piece that feels like it needed Greg Lake’s voice rather than Wetton, who
sounds a little strained at times. Easy Money, however, is more of a sleazy
jazz piece and his voice works really well here. It’s also a showcase for
Muir’s percussion and “allsorts”, with sparse instrumentation in the background
decorated with lots of interesting sounds and noises. The lyric “as you twinkle
by in mocassin sneakers” is followed by a left-right pan of twinkly chimes, for
example. Bruford does some great jazz drumming to go with it as well.
I have mentioned before sharing a student
house with a bunch of proggys, and although I remember this album, it’s not one
that was embedded in my brain as much as Court Of The Crimson King. It's a more
challenging listen, partly because it’s so subtle in most of its elements.
Having passed through all that jazz training of the Fifties section of this list, however, it’s
something I appreciated a lot more this time around – Easy Money was, and still
is, my favourite track on the album, but the others work better for me now,
especially The Talking Drum, I loved that. Approach it as a piece of jazz, or
modernist classical, because it’s more those than it is rock.
[Added in edit: Jamie Muir’s obituary
appeared in the papers just a few days before this edit, in April ‘25. Not long
after recording this album he walked out of music for a while to become a
Buddhist monk in a monastery on the Scottish Borders, not far from where I once
lived. Jamie Muir obituary | Pop and rock | The
Guardian]
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