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King Crimson - Beat CD (album) cover

BEAT

King Crimson

 

Eclectic Prog

3.09 | 1411 ratings

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Erik Nymas
2 stars Beated

After the outstanding Discipline here we got the second album from new KC, for the 1st time they are the same people of the previous disc and maybe this line up can be good enough to create again a great work, but from what we see there isn't a great work:

The album starts with Neil and Jack and me which remember me the intro of Frame by frame reworked with some Bruford's best drums and Belew's voice here more present than the Discipline's track. The album go forward 'till Heartbeat, this is a good song instead: good work from the guitar and the evergreen percussions, with Levin and his bass working in background too bad for the lyrics, pointless and not even looney as the ones in the previous disc. Sartori in Tangier is the first instrumental and here we see the perfect tecnical work from Fripp once again, great and again fresh the drums while the guitars and bass play the counterpoint to Bruford's work, where the song ends Waiting man begins again with the same tunes from the previous track, this time there are no drums but we got a slow lyric session till the middle of the song, when again Bruford take the lead and guitars play in a parallel way as they where two separate groups but everything join togheter for the coda, nice one. Neurotica follow the same line of Indiscipline with strong music over a talked lyrics that works more as an instrument than a real lyric, the fast changes between the guitar bass and percussions make the point, maybe this track is better without Belew's voice even if he uses his voice at the best in this disc. While I've spent some time in Two Hands the first time I've heard of it, as the most accessible track in this disc I don't find anything good for it now, simple song indeed and the lonely guitar with some drums in the background do the same impression of Matte Kudasai and is the weak part of the album since it lack the emotive part present in Discipline's track. To the end we got The Howler and Requiem, while the first is again a music piece plus almost talked lyrics the second is in perfect Lark's style, both have a strange eclectic music and while the first is fast and immediate, the second mantain the dark aspect of early KC, working more on the ambience than sound, maybe the best tracks from here. Conclusions: this Beat cannot ''beat'' the strong and more complex Discipline, not even the previous work, is still a good album and worth something if you like KC's new sound, but 2 stars since it's good in some parts but they don't deserve the 3rd: it does not add anything new and the only track that don't remember Discipline is Requiem and it comes out from Lark's as I've said before, so nothing new, nothing more, nothing at all to begin with KCs!

Erik Nymas | 2/5 |

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