PROJEKCT ONE: JAZZ CAFE SUITE

This disc contains 50 minutes of improvised music by four members of King Crimson, divided in three suites. Some parts may sound familiar, since small bits and pieces were released on the cd " "Live at the Jazz Café" which was part of the ProjeKcts box (1999). It was the last time Bill Bruford was a member of King Crimson.

The album opens with a soundscape and after a few minutes the band starts to play. This means the distinctive rhythm provided by Bruford / Levin, complemented with guitar parts from Fripp / Gunn. The music that follows is very groovy, lively, sometimes boring, but more often fascinating. It changes between fast and slow, has great soloing (especially from Gunn) and some strange sounds. The second suite also starts slow. As its main attraction it has some trademark Fripp solos. After a while it sounds a lot like the spacerock of ProjeKct Two. The shortest and third suite starts with the xylophone sounds where the second suite ended with, but soon picks up a groove with bass sounds everywhere.

ProjeKct One wasn't the first of the ProjeKcts, it also wasn't one of the best of the ProjeKcts. When a band plays improvised music it can both create magical moments and boring times. That also happened with this release. It is a joy to listen to the Bruford / Levin tandem, but the music that is played is not from the hightest order.

I like this ProjeKct set better than most of the others that I've heard, mainly because Bill Bruford is on it, and his improvised drumming is far better than Adrian Belew's v-drums. That makes it better, but it still suffers from one of the main flaws of the recent King Crimson improvisations: they just don't know where to go. The band set's up a good groove (this time with some rib rumbling bass lines) and the band goes off.

The playing is excellent, as usual, but like most KC jams from the past twenty years or so, the musicians don't sound like they are paying much attention to each other. There is very little interaction among the players.

Still, it's King Crimson, man.