RADICAL ACTION TO UNSEAT THE HOLD OF MONKEY MIND

THE HALL BECAME THE KING'S HALL LAST NIGHT! Wow! What a show! I just saw KC on their Radical Action tour last night at the Riverside Theater in Milwaukee, WI! Tremendous!! This cd/dvd 4 disc set does a very good job of encapsulating what we saw last night. I, not being the absolute card carrying KC fan was blown away! Although there was no way that I was going to miss the chance to see this classic group (ensemble)! Hell, none of us are getting any less finite! It was so impressive to just see consummate musicians performing their craft! No pussyfooting around, just damn fine music! Although this may or may not be the way many a long time fan of KC who are far more knowledgeable about them and their music feel, I personally love this box set. Both the live cd's and the fine blu ray! To me the interpretations on this set aren't quite as cold and sterile as mostof the original studio recordings. It was cool to see Robert Fripp and all of his cohorts as they directed crimson waves of energy deep into our auditory cortices! It was an awesome experience! I really love this set and although I was a slightly greater than slight fan of the band before, this has raise their stock in my book substantially! To anyone who likes KC but doesn't love their music or doesn't know it too well, I highly recommend this set! It is a monumental statement and a fine, classy representation of a considerable overview of this amazing King's oeuvre! Well that's it, take care and enjoy God's gift of music!

Wow! Stunning album. I'm not the biggest Crimson fan but I do have a handful of their albums, with the debut being one of the best ever released. They also have several others that jump out, including Red and Thrak. Unfortunately, I didn't care for ThrakAttack and the 80's albums so I thought I was done with them. I accidently ran into Radical Action to Unseat the Hold of Monkey Mind, (say that 3 time fast), and it is a revelation. Jakko Jakszyk replaces the quirky Adrian Belew on vocals which is much to my liking. Many of the tracks are rearranged to let the seven man KC fully utilize the talents of all of these great musicians. The additions to the 3 headed drumming front line and the ultimate prog/rock windwind master Mel Collins join with long time king of the bottom end Tony Levin, and of course the guy pulling all of the strings, Robert Fripp. Really, one of the best albums I've heard in years. The 3 CD set covers their entire career and the BluRay has the same songs but of a different performance so the track list is not the same for the really intense Crim faithful. Although lacking a light show, the 3 drummers and the not having omnipresent split screens and fast cuts with the 3 drummer lineup is a pleasure to watch. The video and sound quality of this live album but without the crowd noise is also top self.

I am going to have to go back and listen to some older King Crimson to see what I have been missing.

Did I say Wow?!

5 stars

Review #41

This album was like the awakening of the sleeping god, which now came in a seven-headed form.

This is probably the best live album KING CRIMSON has in its entire catalog. Three CDs filled with the most epic songs from almost all of their studio albums plus some new songs that were originally composed for this record. This new line-up of seven musicians (FRIPP-LEVIN-MASTELOTTO-RIEFLIN-HARRISON-COLLINS-JAKSZYK) is one of the most powerful line-ups that Crimson ever had.

The songs from "In the court of the Crimson King", "In the wake of Poseidon", "Lizard", "Islands", "Larks' tongues in aspic", "Red", "Discipline", "Thrak", "The construKction of light" and "The power to believe" are taken to a new level of experimentation while the new songs (and even the ones that came from "A scarcity of miracles") give a very fresh sound to the band.

There are just two songs whose performances didn't convince me: "Red" because the three amazing drummers of this line-up couldn't play as good as Bill BRUFORD in this particular piece and the drumline feels kind of poor and "Epitaph" in which the mellotron got lost and Jakko JAKSZYK sang it almost a cappella; out of that, the album is fantastic and also it was the Monkey Mind tour which brought KING CRIMSON to play in Mexico City so I'm very thankful for that.

Absolutely amazing!!

SONG RATING: Larks' tongues in aspic I, 5 Radical action, 4 Meltdown, 4 Radical action II, 4 Level five, 5 The light of day, 4 The hell hounds of Krim, 5 The construKction of light, 5 The talking drum, 5 Larks' tongues in aspic II, 5 Peace, 4 Pictures of a city, 5 Banshee legs bell hassle, 4 Easy money, 5 VROOM, 5 Suitable grounds for the blues, 4 Interlude, 3 The letters, 5 Sailor's tale, 5 A scarcity of miracles, 4 Red, 5 One more red nightmare, 5 Epitaph, 5 Starless, 5 Devil dogs of tessellation row, 4 The court of the Crimson King, 5 21st century schizoid man, 5

AVERAGE: 4.59

PERCENTAGE: 91.85

ALBUM RATING: 5 stars

King Crimson's most recent - and possible final - burst of activity has seen the group abandon studio activity more or less entirely, opting instead to work their craft live in shows integrating sounds from all phases of the band's long existence - and a few new compositions here and there that show influence from even newer sounds than that.

There's points here where Steven Wilson's proggier solo work, such as the Grace For Drowning album, seems to have rubbed off on Robert Fripp and pals a bit, which is perhaps no surprise given how many King Crimson members showed up on that album and how closely Steven Wilson and Fripp have been working together over the past few years to produce lovingly remastered and mixed reissues of Crimson classics.

That process also seems to have seen Fripp rediscover his love of some of the more overlooked eras of the band. In particular, Fripp has tended to pass over the run of albums beginning with In the Wake of Poseidon and ending with Islands when putting together later Crimson setlists - hailing as they do from an unhappy and difficult time in the band's existence when Fripp was flailing around somewhat to keep the project going in the midst of serious lineup instability. With fans and critics alike often giving those albums short shrift too, there wasn't any great expectation that this stuff would be revisited.

However, Fripp found a new appreciation for those albums when working on the new versions with Wilson, and the mid-2010s revival of King Crimson saw material from the era welcomed back into the repertoire, along with the return of Mel Collins, whose sensitive saxophone tones represented some of the best contributions to that era of the group and also spruces up the rest of the material to boot.

Jakko Jakszyk is the new lead vocalist and co-guitarist, slotting into the Adrian Belew role with a vocal style which is somewhat more smooth and less eccentric than Belew's - and so lends itself well to material ranging from across the portfolio. (One can't quite imagine Belew singing, say, Peace with the sincerity that Jakko manages here.)

Everything sounds fantastic - even The ConstruKction of Light, from one of the most unloved Crimson studio albums, gets a fabulous airing here, and you get an absolute treasury of material, ranging from avant-prog and borderline-metallic experimentation to lush symphonic workouts (drawing heavily on Red and In the Court of the Crimson King) to a deep dive into what had hitherto been forbidden zones of the Crimson Kingdom. On the technical level, audience noise is more or less eliminated, yielding not an album which is "live in the studio" but a live album with the crispness of a studio album.