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IN THE COURT OF THE CRIMSON KINGKing CrimsonEclectic Prog4.64 | 4903 ratings |
From Progarchives.com, the ultimate progressive rock music website
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Does this album really need another review? Does its magnificence need another supporter?
I don't think so, really.
Let's just pretend that this is being read by somebody who doesn't know anything about KC, or
progrock, and happens to be in this site for the first time. It's very simple: this is THE
progressive rock album, the one who defined the genre as pseudo-intellectual rambling of
musical prowess, filled with passion, technique, and lyricism. Of course, we know that
ProgRock is so much more than that, and there are so many different bands who are hard to
compare to the mighty Crim. I mean, the mighty Crim's carreer itself is hardly comparable to
this very album, musicwise they drifted away from it pretty quickly. Yet there it stays, as a
monumental milestone, THE progressive album which is praised outside proghead's circles,
the one you'll find in best-of-lists.
It is hard to portray in words the mystic aura this album has. It is so gorundbreaking it feels
other-wordly as of today. its production, some may say dated, stays hauntingly charming. its
playing... if you're a musician of any kind, you can't help but to be amazed on everything that
goes on in here.
and man, THAT cover. i'm sure that design helped to sell an awful lot of copies.
Historicaly, this album is the nightmare at the end of the 60's dream. It is its bad trip. One
might argue that Morrison & co. were already dealing with the dark side of it all. But lyrically
they were still singing about love, sex, rock n' roll, dreams, albeit in very dark tones, Sinfield
(what a name!) instead seems to have vomited on paper all his dark fantasies, all his childhood
nightmares, all his paranoids, and created something unique.
As I've already said, you can hardly call this a King Crimson album. There's almost no trace of
Fripp's hypnotic and angular guitar. The drumming is very un-Crimson-y too, bordering on
typical jazz drums. (But then again, that's why the Crims are so amazing. You have this, then
you have Discipline. You have Islands, then you have Larks. Talking about resting on your
laurels.) But I'm digressing.
Track by track reviewing sounds ridicolous with albums like these. It's all a single magnificent
journey. (By the way, Moonchild is brilliant).This is one of the freshest musical experiences this century had to offer, one of the very few ones that transcend its genre, its format, its period and enter a domain of eternal recognition and adoration. If you fail to grasp its greatness,no problem, but try again. It will hit you sooner or later, just as, say, Picasso or Herriman eventually will. It is THAT good.
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