Robert Fripp @ The New York Times

Why Robert Fripp Resurrected King Crimson

Robert Palmer @ The New York Times
Published: November 1, 1981
What's in a name? Consider the curious case of King Crimson, the name of a succession of rock bands that were put together by the guitarist Robert Fripp between 1969 and 1974. During those years, King Crimson was more a revolving door than a band. The only musician who played in every edition of King Crimson was Mr. Fripp, and the changes in style and substance that marked the various King Crimson albums were a testament to both the fertility and restlessness of his imagination.

In 1974, Mr. Fripp disbanded King Crimson, declaring that in the future he would operate as ''a small, intelligent, highly mobile unit.'' And he did. At his most recent performances here, he sat in a chair, looking something like a banker with his close-cropped hair and three-piece suit, playing dreamy improvisations on his electric guitar for a small, rapt audience.

This Thursday, King Crimson returns for a five-show, three-night run at the Savoy on West 44th Street, having already completed a series of European concerts. The new incarnation of the band includes Mr. Fripp and the drummer Bill Bruford, who was in the 1973-74 edition. The other two members are Adrian Belew, a guitarist who made his reputation as a sideman with David Bowie and the Talking Heads, and the bassist Tony Levin, who has created an utterly original style on his instrument and has been one of New York City's most sought-after studio musicians. Tickets for King Crimson's Savoy shows have been selling briskly, and there is a new King Crimson album, ''Discipline,'' on the EG label distributed by Warner Bros.

All of this - the major-label album, the tour, the resurrection of a name as an apparently-successful commercial ploy - should be faintly amusing, if not disenchanting, to anyone who has followed Robert Fripp's career during the past several years. Mr. Fripp originally disbanded King Crimson, he said at the time, because the phenomenon of supergroups and stadium rock which the band had become part of, was severing all meaningful contact between musicians and their audience. He began performing as a guitar soloist in intimate settings in order to re-establish meaningful contact, playing through a tape-delay system that allowed him to build up dense clouds of sound. He called the system and the music that resulted from his application of it Frippertronics, although he always gave credit for the invention of the system to his friend and frequent collaborator, Brian Eno.

But Frippertronics could not contain Mr. Fripp's energies, and besides, he had a plan. The first phase in his plan was Frippertronics; the second involved the formation of an instrumental dance-rock band called the League of Gentlemen in 1980. That group's music layered Mr. Fripp's flowing, legato guitar lines and the inventive keyboard work of Barry Andrews on top of a crisp, driving rhythm section.

When the other members of the League of Gentlemen went their separate ways, Mr. Fripp set about putting together another band. He came up with a combination of players that pleased him so much, he said recently, he could think of only one thing to call it - King Crimson. According to Mr. Fripp, this development was a fortuitous twist of fate, an opportunity to reach a much larger audience than he had been performing for - and the beginning of the third phase in his plan, which was, essentially, a plan to re-enter the mainstream of rock on his own terms.

Mr. Fripp has released three albums this year, one for each step in his plan. All three were recorded under the banner of EG records, but even the mechanics of their distribution reflect a carefully thought out strategy. ''Let the Power Fall,'' an album of Frippertronics improvisations, was distributed by Jem, an independent company that supports new and unusual rock and rock-related music. ''The League of Gentlemen'' was distributed by Polygram, a company with international clout. But ''Discipline,'' the new King Crimson album, has the merchandising expertise of Warner Bros., who are better at selling progressive rock than just about anyone, behind it.

Mr. Fripp has had to take some critical ribbing for reviving the name King Crimson, but as a music that at least intends to be popular, rock always involves some commercial calculation. It's the music that counts, not the marketing strategy, and Mr. Fripp's most recent albums are organically linked, with each providing a series of musical stepping stones to the next. ''Let the Power Fall,'' the second and best of his Frippertronics albums (the first one was called ''Under Heavy Manners''), is the sort of thing Brian Eno calls ambient music. One can listen to it, one can daydream to it, or one can put it on and do the dishes. Its deceptive simplicity involves the repetition of compact melodic kernels, which are developed in a highly disciplined manner over the course of each improvisation. The combination of rigorous development and bright, appealing melodies recalls some of the work of the composer Philip Glass.

On ''The League of Gentlemen,'' Mr. Fripp and his cohorts applied an identical formula to a more rhythmically propulsive idiom. The result was some exceptionally attractive instrumental rock, though the album is marred somewhat by the insertion of snippets of jolly dialogue between various friends of Mr. Fripp's.

King Crimson always included a vocalist and lyrics; the original vocalist was Greg Lake, who went on to become one-third of the artrock supergroup Emerson, Lake and Palmer, and the original lyrics were rococo and not always intelligible creations by Peter Sinfield. On the new King Crimson album, the songs were collectively composed, and the guitarist Adrian Belew has been drafted to sing them.

Since the album begins with Mr. Belew dismissing all verbalization as ''just talk - elephant talk,'' and punctuating his rants by playing winning imitations of trumpeting elephants on his guitar, one probably shouldn't take the lyrics that follow too seriously.

The level of musicianship in the new King Crimson is very high indeed. Bill Bruford is a dazzling drummer, and he meshes well with the distinctive bass parts provided by Tony Levin, though one wishes Mr. Levin had been more prominent in the album's mix. Mr. Fripp and Mr. Belew are riveting electric guitarists who command so many unorthodox techniques, and employ so many sound-modifying devices, that one can't always be sure who is playing what. They sound like birds in flight, a swarm of bees, and various other natural phenomena as often as they sound like guitarists. But what could easily have become a duel of guitar egos remains as controlled as a Frippertronics improvisation. And the arrangements are basically an extension of the melodic-theme-and-variations techniques explored on ''Let the Power Fall'' and ''The League of Gentlemen.''

Most of the new King Crimson songs don't really work as songs. But when the four members of the band recreate the stark Saharan textures of Paul Bowles's novel ''The Sheltering Sky'' in their instrumental tone poem of the same name, or float shreds of sound over a rhythmic abyss, or charge ahead over dancing sixteenth-note rhythm patterns, they are well-nigh irresistible. And one suspects that this album is basically a warm-up for a band that could make art-rock interesting instead of vacuous and overblown, as the music of most of the bands influenced by the earlier King Crimsons has been. If Robert Fripp can sell music of this caliber to the masses by resurrecting a name, more power to him. =>>>>>>>>>>>

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Robert Fripp

Eric Tamm @ Progressiveears.
Robert Fripp (@amazon) (b. May 1946, Dorset, England) - band leader, recording artist, rock star, virtuoso electric and acoustic guitarist, producer, writer, composer, and, currently, music educator - has been a fixture on the contemporary music scene since 1969. On July 5 of that year, Fripp's first commercially successful group, King Crimson, catapulted themselves to the forefront of public awareness by playing in front of 650,000 people at the Rolling Stones' free Hyde Park concert.

For all his public exposure in the twenty-one years since then, Fripp has remained something of an enigma. Since the drift of what he does tends to be determined by experiences of inner upheaval, it has always been impossible to predict his next move, though in retrospect the logic of the development may seem clear enough. With almost every new venture he has startled his audience and opened up new doors of perception and music.

The music press has had a great time with Fripp. He has been called "the world's most rational rock star," "the Mr. Spock of rock," "the owlish one," a "persnickety plectrist" and a "plectral purist." He has been characterized as a "nouveau conceptualist," a "tin woodsman with a microtonal heart," and as "a riddle wrapped in an enigma wrapped in a guitarist."

One writer described him as having "the air of an old-fashioned, straight-laced and hidebound European professor." That's not the way he came across to me at Guitar Craft XII; well, there was an "element" of the learned professor, perhaps - even of the streetwise priest - but more striking was how genuinely funny he could be, able to make great fun of himself. Fripp possesses a bitingly pointed sense of irony. The liner notes to God Save the Queen/Under Heavy Manners, for instance, are hysterical if you read them in the right spirit; if you read them somberly or defensively, they sound like the most god-awful pomp. (Years ago I noticed a similar phenomenon when reading the manifestoes of the nineteenth-century Danish Christian existentialist Søren Kierkegaard.) Fripp isn't above ordinary, earthy bathroom humor, either. Rolling Stone writer Fred Schruers describes an encounter with Fripp and his tour party in the men's room at Boston's WBCN: "What does one do? Walk over to meet this ferocious intellectual composer guitarist as he lines up at the urinal? As I lurk uncomfortably, the investigator of archetypes addresses his companions: 'I don't see how you can piss without waggin' your willies afterward.'"

Fripp is robust, poised, and physically nimble; he moves gracefully. A peculiar thing about the man is that he must be one of the world's most unphotogenic people. Having seen dozens of photographs of him from every stage in his career, I can attest to the fact that almost none of them look anything like he does in person. Fripp's face, which in pictures can look muggish, leering, or frozen (sorry, Robert!), is in reality a constant dance of expression, handsome and fascinating (that's better). Although he is moderately small in stature, Fripp's presence has a way of filling up the room. He is indeed one of the most present people I have ever met: present to those he is with, acutely sensitive to the situation of the moment, capable of exceptionally keen concentration.

Fripp does have something of a reputation in the press for keeping his emotions carefully under wraps, for being cool and considered, for being something of a mechanical marvel. An interviewer from Creem relates: "He asks me how many words I will need for my article, mentally calculates how much talking he will have to do to provide them, and stops at that point." For his part, Fripp laments: "One of the disadvantages of having the particular stereotype I do is that I tend to get serious interviewers. When I have a serious interviewer coming in my heart sinks. But what can you do? Either refuse to answer his questions, or speak to the serious young intellectuals in the vocabulary serious young intellectuals understand."

Jungian theory postulates four basic psychological functions - thinking, feeling, sensation, and intuition - any of which may dominate the others in a given individual personality. Fripp rejects the notion that he is primarily a rational thinking type: "I'm instinctive [intuitive, in Jungian terms] by nature ... I analyze and rationalize after the event in order to persuade people of something I think to be right." Nevertheless he presents the image of a man to whom self-control is a cardinal virtue, who is aware of his lower nature but struggles to keep it in check. Fripp will instantly retract a remark that in the next moment he considers "flippant" or "inconsidered." =>>>>>>>>>>>

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@ Wiki
Robert Fripp (born May 16, 1946 in Wimborne Minster, Dorset, England) is a guitarist, record producer and a composer, perhaps best known for being the guitarist for, and only constant member of King Crimson. His work, spanning four decades, encompasses a variety of musical styles. He is married to Toyah Willcox. They currently live in Worcestershire, UK.

Fripp's earliest professional work began in 1967, when he responded to an ad looking for a singing organist for a band being formed by bassist Peter Giles and drummer Michael Giles. Though unsuccessful as a live act, Giles, Giles and Fripp did manage to release two singles, as well as an album, The Cheerful Insanity of Giles, Giles and Fripp.

Following the band's breakup, Fripp, along with drummer Michael Giles, made plans for the formation of King Crimson in 1968, with Greg Lake, Peter Sinfield and Ian McDonald. Their first album, In the Court of the Crimson King (@allmusic), was released in late 1969, to mixed critical reviews. Due to musical differences with Giles and McDonald, King Crimson broke up shortly after the release of the first album, to be re-formed again several times over the years. Initially, Fripp had offered to leave the group; however Giles and McDonald felt that King Crimson was his. To date, Robert Fripp has remained the only consistent member of the band. Crimson went through a number of line-ups before Fripp disbanded the group in 1974.

During King Crimson's less active periods, Fripp pursued a number of side-projects. He worked with Keith Tippett (and others who appeared on King Crimson records) on projects far from rock music, producing Septober Energy in 1971 and Ovary Lodge in 1973. During this period he also worked with Van der Graaf Generator, playing on the 1970 album H to He, Who Am the Only One, and in 1971, on Pawn Hearts. Collaborating with Brian Eno, he recorded No Pussyfooting in 1972 and Evening Star in 1974. These two albums featured experimentation with several novel musical techniques, including a tape delay system utilizing dual reel to reel Revox tape machines that would come to play a central role in Fripp's later work. This system came to be known as "Frippertronics". Fripp and Eno also played several live shows in Europe in 1975.

Fripp spent some time away from the music industry in the later 1970s, during which he cultivated an interest in the teachings of Gurdjieff via J.G. Bennett (studies which would later be influential in his work with Guitar Craft). He returned to musical work as a studio guitarist on Peter Gabriel's first self-titled album in 1976, released the following year. Fripp toured with Gabriel to support the album, but remained in the wings and was introduced to audiences as "Dusty Rhodes".

In 1977, Fripp received a phone call from Eno, who was working on David Bowie's album "Heroes". Fripp agreed to play guitar for the album, a move which initiated a series of collaborations with other musicians. Fripp soon contributed his musical and production talents to Peter Gabriel's second album, and collaborated with Daryl Hall on Sacred Songs. During this period, Fripp began working on solo material, with contributions from several other musicians, including Eno, Gabriel, and Hall, as well as Peter Hammill, Jerry Marotta, Phil Collins, Tony Levin and Terre Roche. This material eventually became his first solo album, Exposure, released in 1979, followed by the Frippertronics tour in the same year. While living in New York, Fripp contributed to albums and live performances by Blondie and Talking Heads, and produced The Roches' first album, which featured several of Fripp's characteristic guitar solos.

Fripp's collaboration with bassist Buster Jones, drummer Paul Duskin, and vocals by David Byrne (Byrne credited as Absalm el Habib) produced God Save the Queen/Under Heavy Manners in the following year. He simultaneously assembled what he called a "second-division touring new wave instrumental dance band" under the name League of Gentlemen, with bassist Sara Lee, keyboardist Barry Andrews and drummer Johnny Toobad (later replaced by Kevin Wilkinson) . The LOG toured for the duration of 1980. =>>>>>>>>>>>

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Stephen Thomas Erlewine @ Allmusic
Throughout his career, guitarist Robert Fripp has continually pushed the boundaries of pop music, as well as pursuing many avant-garde and experimental musical ideas. Fripp began playing professionally with the League of Gentlemen in the mid-'60s, providing instrumental support to many American singers who were touring England. During this time he began Giles, Giles and Fripp with Pete and Mike Giles. The trio only released one album, 1968's The Cheerful Insanity of Giles, Giles and Fripp, yet the group soon evolved into King Crimson.

Following the release of their 1969 debut album, In the Court of the Crimson King, King Crimson became one of the most respected progressive rock acts of its era. From 1969 to 1974, Fripp was the one mainstay in the group, leading it through its various musical incarnations.

During this time, he pursued several side projects away from King Crimson. Fripp recorded two albums with Brian Eno: No Pussyfooting (1972) and Evening Star (1974). Both of the albums featured the musicians experimenting with avant-garde techniques, including Fripp's "Frippertronics." Frippertronics featured layers of guitars and tape loops, producing a harmonically rich, humming sound; it became a familiar sound on his records. Fripp also produced a handful of albums, mainly records by experimental jazz outfits.

In 1974, Fripp disbanded King Crimson and retired from music. Three years later, he returned to the business, playing on David Bowie's "Heroes." Soon afterward, he produced and played on Peter Gabriel's second self-titled album, as well as Daryl Hall's Sacred Songs. Fripp released his first solo album, Exposure, in 1979. God Save the Queen/Under Heavy Manner appeared the following year and in 1981, he assembled a new lineup of King Crimson. While that band recorded and performed, he also led a new band which borrowed its name from his first group, the League of Gentlemen. After releasing three albums, the new version of King Crimson broke up in 1984; The League of Gentlemen split soon afterward.

Fripp released God Save the King in 1985 and began teaching guitar, dubbing his students and school the League of Crafty Guitarists; he released an album recorded with his Crafty Guitarists in 1986, the same year he released the first of two collaborations with his wife, Toyah Wilcox. Fripp re-formed the '80s lineup of King Crimson in late 1994, releasing Thrak in 1995. He returned to recording solo in 1997, releasing That Which Passes. =>>>>>>>>>>>

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Robert Fripp @ Frippertronics

Frippertronics/Soundscaping

Andre LaFosse @ Loopers Delight
The process known as Frippertronics originated when Brian Eno demonstrated a tape-loop system (wherein a single reel of tape is actually physically joined together at the ends and then run continuously between the outermost reels of two adjacent decks, the first of which records incoming sound and the second of which plays it back) based around two reel-to-reel Revox decks to Robert Fripp. (According to the liner notes for Fripp's 1994 solo album 1999, a mechanical diagram of this process graces the cover of Brian Eno's Discreet Music.)

In a 1979 interview conducted by Ron Gaskin (which is, incidentally, one of the most illuminating and amusing Fripp interviews I've run across, and which is available on the Elephant Talk Web archive), Fripp describes the mechanics as follows:

RG: Could you simply explain the process of Frippertronics?

RF: Yes. I record on the left machine, the guitar is recorded on the left
machine, the signal passes along the tape to the right machine where it's
played back to the left machine and recorded a second time.

RG: OK.

RF: The signal recorded the second time passes along the tape to the right
machine where it's played back a second time and recorded a third.

RG: And at what point is it released into the room?

RF: Oh, straightaway. Unless, what I could do if I wanted to be crafty,
would be to build up a chord which no one could hear and then turn the
chord on, but, in fact, that doesn't happen. I've only done that, I think,
on a couple of occasions. You hear it happening.

The track "The Heavenly Music Corporation" from the Fripp/Eno album No Pussyfooting is, in fact, a document of the very first time Fripp was exposed to looping. Though the album was released in 1973, word has it that the actual recording took place in 1971 and was delayed for two years by Eno's record company, on the grounds that association with Fripp could be detrimental to the former's career. Fripp allegedly coined the term for his own use of the system chiefly because, as he put it in Eric Tamm's book, "it was a silly name."

(It should be noted that, to my knowledge, Eno was not in fact the first person to develop this type of tape loop system; though I am unsure as to exactly who can lay claim to the origination of the process, I am under the impression that Terry Riley and Steve Reich both did work with tape loops which preceeded the advent of Eno's work, albiet of a somewhat different mechanical and sonic nature).

The first recorded evidence of Frippertronics of which I am aware is the album Exposure, which was the first release by Fripp following the end of his mid-'70s retreat from the music scene (and holds the additional distinction of being one of the most thoroughly bizarre recordings I've ever run across). The Frippertronics effect is scattered throughout the record, and is probably most readilly identifiable in the piece "Water Music 1" which serves as a prelude to "Here Comes The Flood."

The "Exposure Non-Tour" which followed the release of the record consisted of a series of solo Frippertronics performances held in a variety of atypical venues, including pizza parlors and barber shops (the latter of which apparently served as the impetus for so-called "Barbertronics," wherin Frippertronics provided the soundtrack for hair-cutting).

Fripp's comments in the 1979 Gaskin interview go on to describe the unorthodox nature of the music, and the atypical expectations it placed on the audience; from a modern perspective, these are highly interesting and valuable insights, as they provide firsthand evidence of some of the first public performances of "ambient" music.

A document of solo Frippertronics performances was released in the '80s under the title Let The Power Fall. One detail of this recording of note is that the recordings on this album are not of the entire performances, but only of the portions of the music which were printed to the tape loop itself. Apparently Fripp would commonly solo over the loop in the background; this aspect of the performance, not being put into the loop, was subsequently not present on the final record.

Frippertronics was employed throughout Fripp's public work in the early '80s, after which he left the performance scene and formed the Guitar Craft network of clinics. Upon his return to the music industry in the early '90s, his use of looping became considerably more complex in both mechanics and result; a pair of T.C. Electronics digital delays replaced the Revox tape decks, and the use of MIDI guitar was far more prominent than it had been in the '80s. (Fripp eventually added other looping gear, including the Oberheim Echoplex Digital Pro, to his setup). Owing to the substantially different nature of the methodology and sound of this process, Fripp dubbed his '90s version of looping as Soundscaping.

Considerably more complex than Frippertronics, Soundscaping has provided the entirety of the music on the albums 1999, A Blessing Of Tears, Radiophonics, Soundbites, and The Gates Of Paradise, all of which are live direct-to-DAT solo performance recordings. It is also present on numerous other Fripp-related projects from the early '90s, including the work of King Crimson and other artists. The earliest versions of Soundscapes can likely be found the 1993 Sylvian/Fripp album The First Day, which is scattered with the technique and which features what appears to be a Soundscape solo piece in the form of "Bringing Down The Light."

[This is by no means an all-inclusive overview of Frippertronics, and I encourage anyone else to offer additions or corrections to the information I've presented here. I also encourage all interested readers to investigate the aforementioned 1979 interview in its entirety for more information on Frippertronics theory and philosophy.}
--Andre LaFosse =>>>>>>>>>>>

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@ Wiki
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.

Note that this is separate from the soundscape concept utilized by various avant-garde composers.

In the late 1970's, Robert Fripp worked with a technique termed Frippertronics, in solo performances featuring audio loops created with electric guitar and interconnected tape recorders.

In the 1990's Fripp revamped the Frippertronics system by incorporating digital electronics in lieu of tape recorders and effects pedals, renaming it Soundscapes.

Technology
The new digital technology included digital delay devices, digital audio processors, and guitar synthesizers.

The audio flow would typically be:
- A guitarist (e.g. Fripp)...
- The energy of which is transmitted to an electric guitar with a guitar synthesizer pickup/interface (e.g. the Roland GK-3) connecting to a guitar synthesizer module (e.g. the GR-33)...
- The output of this being routed to a digital audio processor to add guitar effects to the sound...
- This then is routed to an array of digital delay units (e.g. TC Electronic TC2290). The digital delays are used to create audio loops of various lengths of time. The common method being that one unit would be used to create one complete loop, then another unit to create a different loop. These loops would then be combined into the final audio output, being faded in and out by Fripp during the performance. The loops might not necessarily be heard during their creation, but may be faded in gradually...
- The audio from the digital delays would then be processed by more digital electronics (e.g. the Eventide Harmonizer), then becoming the final composition.

Art
Fripp states on the Disicpline Global Mobile web site that Soundscapes: "has the aim of finding ways in which intelligence and music, definition and discovery, courtesy and reciprocation may enter into the act of music for both musician and audience".

Because Fripp had also stated that the intent is for active listening by the audience, it can be argued that Soundscapes may not be considered as a type of ambient music, as it is sometimes described.

The performances were improvised; they could be quite loud, lengthy, dramatic, soothing, eerie, and possibly alarming. Because Soundscapes were often held as part of a rock concert, they could prove somewhat taxing on an unprepared audience. =>>>>>>>>>>>

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Frippertronics ArKchived
by
Dave Litfin and Steve Behrends

The following is our attempt to catalogue Robert Fripp's recorded "Frippertronics" concerts, from 1979 to 1983.

Our emphasis in this list is primarily on the actual Frippertronics performances themselves, rather than the conversation and Q&A that also were also part of these concerts.

A few comments on our terminology.

The term "Loop" is used to represent a Frippertronics piece. As its well known, at a typical concert several Loops would be created, then later replayed as a basis for soloing. We signify the creation of a given loop as "Loop #x", where "x" indicates the order of its performance on the concert recording; a later replay of this Loop is presented as "Loop #x R". A quick look at a few of our concert listings should hopefully make this clear!

When Fripp replayed only part of a Loop, or when radio/TV broadcasts included only part of a Loop, this is marked as an "excerpt". On the other hand, when an audience recording of a Loop is missing either the earlier part or the later part of the Loop, we write "missing beg." or "missing end". We use the single term "splice" to indicate any kind of gap in the concert recording of a Loop -- regardless of whether the splice is clean and seamless, or an audible break. The performance-time lost by these splices ranges from very small to very large.

A word about the subjective sound quality rating. Practically speaking, our scale is from 5-10, where a recording at 5 or lower would be difficult to justify listening to.

Specific problems with some concert recordings are noted. And as to the completeness of this list in terms of extant recordings -- who can say? There of course may be many recorded performances out there of which we know nothing. =>>>>>>>>>>>

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King Crimson

@ Wiki
King Crimson are an influential English musical group founded by guitarist Robert Fripp (@amazon) and drummer Michael Giles in 1969. Their dense musical style has typically been categorised as progressive rock, although it also has influences from jazz, classical, new wave, heavy metal and folk. Although King Crimson has garnered little radio or music video airplay, they have a devoted following.

Though its membership has fluctuated considerably during its lifetime, the band continues to perform and record music. Guitarist Robert Fripp (@amazon) is said to have once noted that "King Crimson exists when King Crimson needs to exist". Fripp has been the only consistent member, although he has stated that he does not necessarily consider himself the band's leader. To him King Crimson "is a way of doing things", and the musical consistency that has persisted throughout the band's history, despite frequent rotation of its members, reflects this point of view.

The name King Crimson was coined by lyricist Peter Sinfield 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". However, the original name is understood to be from ba'al zebul, "Lord of the Seat". (The name was later popularly corrupted to ba'al zevel, "Lord of the Dungheap", and ba'al zevuv, "Lord of the Flies", because the god's statue was constantly covered in blood.)

Drummer Michael Giles and his bassist brother Peter, put out an advertisement for a singing organist. Robert Fripp (@amazon), a guitarist who didn't sing, responded to the ad. The improbable trio of Giles, Giles and Fripp was formed. They recorded one album together, the idiosyncratic "The Cheerful Insanity of Giles, Giles and Fripp."
(more...........)

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J.D. Considine @ Rolling Stone
Despite counting among its alumni members of Bad Company; Emerson, Lake & Palmer; Foreigner; and Asia; King Crimson has never had much truck with the pop end of progressive rock. Instead, the ever-changing ensemble has preferred to haunt the artiest extremes of the prog-rock movement, producing music that can be abstruse, arcane, abrasive, and abstract -- but very rarely boring. As such, it casts a long shadow, not just over prog rock but also new wave, alt rock, and metal, echoing audibly in such acts as Gentle Giant, Talking Heads, Dream Theater, Tool, and Opeth.

King Crimson is, by and large, a creature of guitarist Robert Fripp (@amazon), but that's not quite the same thing as its being Fripp's band. Despite his reputa-tion as a less-than-democratic bandleader, Fripp has long recognized that Crimson's musical identity is more the product of collaboration than direction. The group started out as a collective operation, which should be evident from the chamber-music dynamics found in most of the playing on In the Court of the Crimson King (@allmusic). Although best remembered for the sci-fi fury of "21st Century Schizoid Man," the other songs find the band operating in the semiclassical mode favored by early art rockers; apart from occasional mellotron overkill and singer Greg Lake's pompons tendencies, the album remains quite listenable. That's not quite the case with In the Wake of Poseidon, on which the band's sound grows more complicated, with jazzy rhythms and knotty, dissonant instrumental lines flavoring "Pictures of a City" and "Cat Food," while lengthy, obtuse improvisa-tion dominates "The Devil's Triangle." Lizard pushes those elements even harder but with less success; apart from the "Bolero" segment of the 24-minute "Lizard," the improvisational sections inevitably degenerate into showy self-indulgence. Live, however, a lot of that fat was burned off in the heat of performance, and the Epitaph sets do an admirable job of documenting that intensity. Vol. 1, which captures the last performance before this lineup disbanded, is by far the strongest.

Fripp reformed Crimson a year later with a new rhythm section and singer Boz Burrell. This lineup debuts on Islands, but apart from "Ladies of the Road," which sets its groupie-adoration lyric to a lean, edgy blues, the songs rank among the group's most pretentious. Nor was this version of Crimson particularly long-lasting, as the other members abandoned ship a year later. (Earthbound, a mediocre live album featuring this lineup, was for years the only other document of this version of Crimson; it has since been augmented with the much-superior Ladies of the Road, which includes a whole disc of excerpted guitar and sax solos from various versions of "21st Century Schizoid Man").

The next incarnation of King Crimson was on many counts its best. In addition to boasting enormously capable players, this band -- violinist David Cross, bassist/vocalist John Wetton, drummer Bill Bruford, and percussionist Jamie Muir -- was disciplined enough to keep the improvisational passages sharp and lean and to make the actual songs seem tuneful and direct. As such, the incandescent Larks' Tongues in Aspic alternates between crisply played, dramatically paced instrumentals, like the two-part title tune, and quirky vocal numbers, such as "Book of Saturday" and the clankingly catchy "Easy Money." Never before had Crimson's music been so daring and focused. After such heights, Starless and Bible Black is a bit of a let down; while "The Great Deceiver" and "Starless and Bible Black" have their moments, the material is generally too fragmented to cohere. Red, however, quickly returns to form. With Cross and Muir gone, the chemistry between Fripp, Wetton, and Bruford is intensely dynamic, adding bite to works like "Fallen Angel" and the electrifying "Red." USA, a live album recorded with the Cross-Fripp-Wetton-Bruford lineup, was the first of many "official bootleg" recordings by this period Crimson. The Night Watch is the best of the lot, though there's also a lot of good stuff squirreled away on the four-CD set The Great Deceiver.

King Crimson called it quits again in 1975, but Fripp, never one to say never, brought the band back in 1981 with Discipline. Bruford and Fripp were the only carryovers from the previous incarnation; joining them were Peter Gabriel bassist Tony Levin and guitarist Adrian Belew. Even given Crimson's history of never downplaying its chops, this was a player's band in the truest sense of the term, and the quartet's jaw-dropping technique is more than obvious on such knottily rhythmic, harmonically demanding workouts as "Thela Hun Ginjeet," "Elephant Talk," and "Discipline." Beat, this crew's sophomore effort, is a little less rigorous, with Belew's melodic instincts adding a pop sheen to the snakily complex instrumental lines beneath "Neal and Jack and Me" and "Waiting Man." Three of a Perfect Pair introduces funk elements to the band's rhythmic repertoire and gives a nod to the band's past in "Larks' Tongues in Aspic Part III." Then after a 1984 tour, vividly documented on Absent Lovers, King Crimson abdicated yet again.

Not that Fripp would ever fully retire the crown, of course. The next King Crimson emerged in 1994, in what Fripp had dubbed the "double trio" format with two guitarists, two bassists, and two drummers -- basically, the entire previous lineup plus bassist Trey Gunn and drummer Pat Mastelotto. VROOOM is simply an opening salvo, offering an early take on ideas that would be fleshed out more fully on THRAK; the former's principal charm is the fluidity of the intertwining group improvisations. THRAK, by contrast, is a more typical Crimson album, offering a couple of solid songs ("Dinosaur," "Sex Sleep Eat Drink Dream") and lots of edgily aggressive playing. Quirky uppercasing aside, THRaKaTTaK isn't especially interesting, as its in-depth exploration of synth technology turns the music into something resembling a high-concept sound-effects record. This isn't the most consistent Crimson, but it is extraordinarily well documented, thanks to such goofily titled live albums as B'Boom (spotty) and VROOOM VROOOM (which is long but boasts a few brilliant bits).

Surprisingly, King Crimson didn't disband after this run; instead, it split into various fractals -- or, as Fripp spelled it, "fraKctals." These were four "projeKct" groups featuring various mutations on the last King Crimson, minus Bruford, who presumably got annoyed by the insertion of that stupid capital K. The ProjeKcts is a four-CD box documenting these outings, and while the playing is frequently astonishing, the general lack of a melodic anchor more often than not leaves the music adrift. (The Deception of the Thrush handily excerpts from the box for those merely interested in a taste.)

ConstruKction of Light marks the post-ProjeKct return of Crimson, now down to a quartet, due to Levin's departure. Again the playing is vigorous, but the writing is too stiff and self-conscious to be completely convincing; there are better versions of "Into the Frying Pan" and "ProzaKc Blues" on the live Heavy ConstruKction. The four returned to the studio for Happy With What You Have to Be Happy With, a VROOOM-style prequel to The Power to Believe. Each has its charms, with Happy showing more grit and raw aggression, while Believe showcases the band's subtlety and polish; but the writing is the band's best in years, particularly "Eyes Wide Open" and "Happy With What You Have to Be Happy With," which appear in different versions on both.

There are two King Crimson anthologies out, neither of which captures the entire span of the band's existence. The Compact King Crimson is perhaps too compact, as it draws only from In the Court of the Crimson King, Discipline, Beat, and Three of a Perfect Pair. The boxed anthology Frame by Frame is considerably more inclusive, offering one disc's worth of music for each of the band's three periods of development, plus a fourth, live disc; The Abbreviated King Crimson reduces its bulk to a single, judiciously edited CD. Since forming his own Discipline label in the mid-'90s, Fripp has also launched a "collector's club" series, which has at this point released more than 20 albums of live recordings and esoterica (available online through www.disciplineglobalmobile.com).

From 2004's The New Rolling Stone Album Guide

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@ George Starostin
If prog rock ever lied at least a pair of miles away from your interests, you're simply bound to get at least a couple of King Crimson albums (and one of them certainly got to be In the Court of the Crimson King (@allmusic)), just because listening to a King Crimson album is like listening to the very soul of progressive rock. Here was a group that managed to get away with writing totally de-personalized music - music that didn't seem to come from anybody in particular and didn't belong to anyone in particular. If we're speaking of de-personalized music, Pink Floyd is usually the most obvious candidate that comes to mind. But Pink's lack of human identity was totally artificial, caused by Roger Waters' dislike of the musical press more than of anything else. The actual music was always highly personal, especially the later albums. Same goes for most of the Reverends of art and prog rock - Jon and Ian Anderson, Peter Gabriel, Greg Lake, all of these guys were great but, dang it, they were guys, with their own worlds and psychologies.
King Crimson, on the other hand, was a band in the pure sense of the word - despite its 'revolving door' structure. Come to think of it, definitely because of the revolvin' door structure! Robert Fripp was their musical 'director', but he wasn't much of a composer - his only principle seems to have always been that of putting the music before the composer. And this is the only moment that unites all of King Crimson - from the silly, lightweight pre-Crimson Giles, Giles & Fripp and right to their last crazy sonic experimentations of the Nineties. You might accuse King Crimson of pretentiousness, pomposity, complexity for the sake of complexity and everything, but 'self-indulgence' is the only of the standard epithets that sounds somewhat lame when applied to King Crimson music - because it has no 'self'. It's totally abstract, personality-free, soulless, if I might say so. Even Yes didn't go that far. Maybe it has something to do with jazz music as one of the band's strongest influences: I've always thought of middle and late period jazz as highly esoteric, 'restricted' music with little spiritual filler but a lot of undeserved gall, and the same can be really said of King Crimson. However, they're actually better - sometimes, because the band never felt itself as restricted as even the most professional and talented jazz players; King Crimson have changed quite a lot of images throughout their career.

Of course, there's also a bad side to this lack of face: much too often, the band engages in boring 'art for art' sequences, resulting in the fact that, along with some of the greatest rock moments, they are also responsible for some of its most unbearable ones: whereas Fripp always thrived to be at the front line and would soak in any new influences, he was, and still is, always famous for also disregarding the conventional rules of melody to such an extent that quite a solid batch of the band's catalog can only be accessible to real diehards. But at least their tenure is totally unique among prog rockers, and if you can't help hating art rock but would like to be able to cure yourself of your attitude, King Crimson is the best candidate for you. It's unfortunate that the band never really had any big financial success (as far as I know, their debut album is their only serious sell-out); on the other hand, it saved their music from being overplayed and you can't diss them like you diss your Dark Side Of The Moon - that is, the only reason being 'I'm sick to death of it'...
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Bruce Eder @ Allmusic
If there is one group that embodies both the best and the worst aspects of progressive rock (from the standpoints of both its supporters and its detractors), it is King Crimson. During its first five years of existence, from 1969 through 1974, in a variety of different lineups, this band led by guitar/Mellotron virtuoso Robert Fripp broke lots of new ground in progressive rock, stretching both the language and structure of the music into realms of jazz and classical, all the while avoiding any of the pop or psychedelic sensibilities of the Moody Blues. The absence of those pop compromises, and the lack of an overt sense of humor, ultimately doomed King Crimson to nothing more than a large cult following, but made their albums among the most enduring and respectable of progressive rock relics.

King Crimson originally grew out of the remnants of an unsuccessful trio called Giles, Giles & Fripp. Michael Giles (drums, vocals), Peter Giles (bass, vocals), and Robert Fripp (guitar) had begun working together in late 1967, after playing in a variety of bands. Robert Fripp (born May 16, 1946, Dorset, England) had studied guitar in Bournemouth with a teacher named Don Strike, whose other students included a slightly younger Greg Lake. As a teenager, he'd played in a local band called the Ravens, whose lineup included vocalist Gordon Haskell, also a boyhood friend of Fripp's. From the spring of 1965 until the following spring, he and Haskell had been members of a group called the League of Gentlemen (the name taken from a very famous British crime-caper movie), and Fripp had also played guitar in the Majestic Dance Orchestra.

Michael Giles (born 1942, Bournemouth, Dorset, England) and Peter Giles had played with bandleader/brothers Dave and Gordon Dowland in a group called the Dowland Brothers from 1962 until 1964. More recently, they'd been part of a Bournemouth group called Trendsetters, Ltd., but had left that group in the summer of 1967 and were looking to put together a band of their own. They hooked up with Fripp in August of 1967, and by September the trio had journeyed to London in search of fame and fortune. Instead, they found an Italian singer for whom they played backup for a week before parting company.

At the time, British rock, and especially the London music scene, was in the process of evolving by leaps and bounds. The release of the Sgt. Pepper album in the summer of 1967, coupled with the ever druggier ambience both in everybody's songwriting and at the city's clubs, was causing a revolution in the sound of rock music. The totally unexpected success of what had been intended as a "stereo demonstration" record by the Moody Blues and the London Festival Orchestra, released by Decca Records' Deram imprint later that year, seemed to confirm that bands other than the Beatles could sell records of that type.
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@ Gibraltar Encyclopedia
King Crimson are one of the most influential and highly regarded of the long-lived prog bands. Through numerous line-up changes, their founder and guitarist, the ubiquitous and brilliant Robert Fripp, has crafted King Crimson's sound through quite distinct musical phases. Although the official classification for real KC-heads notes around seven identifiably different KC phases, the new listener can be given a good picture by pointing out three main phases in their musical output. Phase one consists of recordings up to and including Islands. Most of this period was characteristically defined by the lyrics and "spiritual guidance" of Peter Sinfield...a fair degree of high-brow social comment and mysticism. The music shows folk elements and ranges from chaotic improvisations with a seemingly huge amount of instruments (most of them Fripp on Mellotron) to beautiful acoustic songs with floating melodies. Fripp's later incredible and highly original guitar work is not too obvious in this phase but complements the music greatly when it appears. Many long, classicaly inspired pieces involving much Mellotron and occasionaly full orchestras make this phase sound more dated than later material but it all has a really timeless quality too (is that a contradiction?). Lizard is my favourite from this period and is probably the most ageless album I have. This period involved a lot of prog illumini on various albums ... Jon Anderson sings on Lizard, Greg Lake sings and plays on In the Wake ... etc. Phase Two involved Lark's Tongues up to and including Red. Much more modern sounding, many consider this Crimson's high point. Bill Bruford on percussion, John Wetton on vocals and David Cross on strings. Fripp's guitar rears its head properly on these recordings and you are treat to some of the most inspired and brilliantly original guitar work ever produced. There are a lot of long instrumental tracks that sound improvised but have a really tight structure...very loud distortion and strange modalities combine to provide a real challenge to the prog listener. Touching jazz ideas in places, folk in others and raw Fripp in most, Lark's Tongues is quite superb. Features percussion legend Jamie Muir, too. Most of Starless and Bible Black is live improvisation around Fripp themes with the audience dubbed out and this fact should be remembered when listening to the two amazing extended instrumentals on side two! Often descending into what sounds like "horror music" in these instrumentals, they come soaring up from the quiet passages with Wetton's bass and Fripp's screaming guitar together. Great stuff. Red shows a new development as the sound is tightened (Cross has left by now) and the characteristic Fripp guitar figures begin to emerge. Great percussion and a fantastic vocal track "Starless" on side two that incorporates Fripp's "one-note" solo section! This is often said to Crimson's most "metal" album but this is really misleading. It has absolutely nothing to do with "metal" as commonly perceived, it just has more guitar. A brilliant album. Phase three envelops Discipline, Beat and Three of a Perfect Pair. Very different to the other material, this was the result of a regrouping that Fripp undertook many years after he had broken Crimson up after Red. He originally re-formed the group under the name "Discipline," then changed the name to King Crimson and made an album called Discipline. Confusing, eh? Anyway, this lineup had Bruford on percussion, Adrian Belew on vocals/guitar and the stick-master Tony Levin on stick-bass. Belew's influence made this phase a lot more "pop" oriented than had previously been the case and these three albums are probably the most acessible of the KC recordings. Fripp's guitar-work had fully matured and his obscure time signatures and Belew's sense of humour (and amazing guitar talent) made for a really heady mixture. Characterised by overlapping guitar lines played in different times so as to sound like weird delay effects and Levin's perfectly executed and mid-range stick lines, this phase is a real delight. Belew's voice was made for this type of material and it fits well. As usual, brillant (but more subdued) percussion from Bruford. Get some of this phase or miss out on Crimson at a creative height. In short, a legendary band in all their incarnations. Rarely has such diversity been containable under one name. Totally recommended. All of their back studio catalogue was re-mixed for CD by Fripp and Tony Arnold in 1989 and is now available; look for the "definitve edition" blurb on the case. Latest lineup is Fripp, Belew, Levin, Trey Gunn, Pat Mastalotto and Bruford.
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@ Rare Vinyl
Founded by guitarist Robert Fripp, during its first five years of existence King Crimson stretched both the language and structure of rock into realms of jazz and classical music, all the while avoiding pop and psychedelic sensibilities; the absence of mainstream compromises ultimately doomed the group to nothing more than a large cult following, but made their albums among the most enduring and respectable of the progressive rock era. King Crimson originally grew out of the remnants of an unsuccessful trio called GILES, GILES & FRIPP. The trio recorded their album, The Cheerful Insanity of Giles, Giles and Fripp, during the summer of 1968. Even as the album was in the works, however, the group's line-up was changing: Ian McDonald and Peter Sinfield joined late in 1968. This line-up recorded demos of "I Talk to the Wind" and "Under the Sky": Peter Giles exited the scene in November of 1968, and Fripp's childhood friend, vocalist/bassist Greg Lake, joined two days later.

The new roster of Fripp, Lake, McDonald, and Michael Giles - with Sinfield writing their lyrics - officially became King Crimson on January 13, 1969, deriving the name from Sinfield's lyrics for the song "Court of the Crimson King". In July of 1969, the group debuted in front of 650,000 people at a free concert in London's Hyde Park on a bill with the Rolling Stones; later that month King Crimson Released their first album In The Court Of The Crimson King was one of the most challenging albums of the entire fledgling progressive rock movement, but somehow it caught the public's collective ear at the right moment and hit n° 5 in England. At the peak of the LP's success the band broke up: McDonald and Giles decided to leave. Greg Lake soon decided to leave Crimson as well, but agreed to stay long enough to record vocals for the next album. Finally, a new album (In the Wake of Poseidon) were recorded early in 1970: essentially a Fripp-dominated retake of In the Court of the Crimson King, Lake sang on all but one of the songs, Fripp played mellotron and guitars, and a new singer, Gordon Haskell, debuted on "Cadence and Cascade". Fripp spent the month of August rehearsing a new King Crimson line-up, consisting of himself, Haskell (bass, vocals), saxman/flautist Mel Collins, and Andy McCullough (drums). This group, augmented by pianist Keith Tippett, guest vocalist Jon Anderson of Yes, and oboist/English horn virtuoso Marc Charig, recorded the next Crimson album, Lizard, in the fall of 1970, but Haskell and McCullough both walked out soon after it was finished.

In December of 1970, Ian Wallace joined on drums, and after auditioning several aspiring singers Fripp chose Boz Burrell as the group's new vocalist. The latest Crimson line-up emerged on stage in April of 1971. Sinfield split in December. Their new album is Islands. The band broke up in April of 1972. But in July of 1972 Fripp put together a new band consisting of drummer Bill Bruford, John Wetton on bass and vocals, David Cross on violin and mellotron, and Jamie Muir on percussion. This group recorded their debut album, Larks' Tongues in Aspic. Muir was out of the line-up in 1973. In January of 1974, King Crimson cut a new album, Starless and Bible Black. In July of 1974 exited. With King Crimson reduced to a trio, one more album, Red, was completed that summer with help from Cross, Mel Collins and Ian McDonald. Fripp disbanded the group on September 25, 1974. In June of 1975 a live album called USA was issued, followed four years later by Fripp's first solo album, Exposure. Finally, in April of 1981, Fripp formed a new group with Bruford, bassist Tony Levin, and guitarist/singer Adrian Belew. By the time their album was released in October of that year: the album was titled Discipline. This band toured and recorded regularly over the years. They splintered after two more albums, 1982's Beat and 1984's Three of a Perfect Pair. King Crimson remained silent for about a decade. Finally, in 1994, Fripp reunited with the Discipline-era lineup, augmenting the group with drummer/percussionist Pat Mastelotto and bassist/guitarist/Chapman Stick player Trey Gunn.

The EP VROOOM appeared late that year, setting the stage for a full-fledged comeback with 1995's Thrak. The album earned generally good reviews and re-established Crimson as a viable touring concern, although it took until 2000 for the band to come up with a new studio album (ConstruKction of Light) amidst a continuing stream of archive-clearing collections. In the five years between Thrak and ConstruKction of Light, the members of Crimson often fragmented the band into experimental subgroups dubbed ProjeKcts. The idea was to mix things up a bit and generate fresh musical ideas prior to the forthcoming album; in the meantime, drummer Bill Bruford and bassist Tony Levin left the band. Culled from the supporting European tour, the live box Heavy ConstruKction was released later in 2000.
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A British Rock Invasion Is Led By King Crimson; Midnight Opera Group Experiments With Jazz Cleo Laine's Songs Get Big Reception Urbie Green's Quintet Plays Danceable Jazz John S. Wilson

April 30, 1973, Monday
John Rockwellian Dovejohn Rockwell
Page 24, 1039 words

Displaying First Paragraph - The Union Jack was fluttering over the Academy of Music on 14th Street on Friday and Saturday, underlining the continued affluence of the British rock'n'roll scene. On the two evenings four British rock groups appeared. The headliner of Saturday's show was the latest version of King Crimson, which previously has had much trouble in court due to shifting personnel. =>>>>>>>>>>>

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Links:
The notes from A Young Person's Guide to King Crimson
King Crimson surfaces again, an article from The Daily Beacon.
The Two Sides of Adrian Belew.