EYES WIDE OPEN

This set contains 2 DVDs featuring 2 different shows, one from April 2003 and another from July 2000. With the present line up of Robert Fripp, Adrian Belew, Trey Gunn, and Pat Mastelotto, King Crimson's music which has evolved in many styles while maintaining the basic ingredients especially with the guitar style of Robert Fripp - the only band member that has never left the band. Some of their musical ventures challenged traditional of prog music. King Crimson has been known as centered around the musical virtuosity of Robert Fripp. Well, many will point to longtime guitarist/vocalist Adrian Belew as one of the pivotal components to what makes King Crimson what they are today. One could say that Adrian is the rock star figure that Fripp initially might not project. With his long tenure in prog arena, even some people say that King Crimson was the founding father of prog music (as we knew it), the band still maintains its existence through offering different styles but maintaining the core music (I guess is the Frippian guitar that has long characterized the band's music).

Disc One contains the concert vintage on the April 16, 2003 show in Tokyo and it has 14 songs, many of which are from this formation of KC. As this tour was to promote the latest album called "The Power to Believe", you can expect the set list. The very popular and decades old "Larks' Tongues in Aspic: Part IV" is played on both discs. The Japan show is a bit loose and played off of each other with Fripp style characterized the atmosphere combined with Belew with in his usual exceptional quality - an attractive guitar play.

Disc Two showcases a show from July 3, 2000 to promote "The ConstrucKction of Light" in London. The audience is larger than the first disc with 15 songs on the second disc. In total, the whole set offers 29 tracks but there are 6 duplications - so actually you will have a selection of 23 songs. Don't worry, the 6 same songs are performed differently - so you won't get bored with the duplication.

The picture quality is not that excellent with this DVD as there are some blurs and fuzziness on Disc Two. Fortunately, sonic quality is excellent With Dolby Stereo or Dolby Surround choices, the audio is crystal clear. With this excellent audio quality it suffices to best enjoy the music of King Crimson. The extras provide improvisational works for fans that enjoy this kind of thing. There are the experimentation of screeching guitars, tribal beats, and rhythmic extensions. Each member of the band jams to their own song while being accompanied by the rest. It takes a die-hard KC fan to enjoy this. Interestingly, this also lends to a feature of the second disc in that normal play 'borrows' from this set of extras and inserts them randomly in any of the songs.

One of my major consideration to any DVD purchase is the booklet in which this live set offers 16 pages with photos, track listing, liner notes, and tour information from whence these song performances originated from. It's a user friendly booklet and it's an excellent one. Well, I have always enjoyed the artwork of most of King Crimson's DVDs like the one titled "Deja Vroom" which I will write a review later.

Overall, it's an excellent addition to any prog music collection. Keep on proggin' ..!

Progressively yours, GW

Of the three KC DVD available around the end of 05, this is the one I could not actually enjoy whatsoever. If I had only moderately appreciated the 80's KC version DVD, mostly because of the relatively popish writings and visuals (as well as some rather badly aged innovations drums machine from Mr. Bruford), I had really loved the "double trio" DVD called Deja Vroom and its particularly inventive and innovative line-up!

Although in most Crimsonhead's minds, this quartet is the same incarnation of KC than the sextet line-up that made Thrak (much the same way the Lark quintet had become the Red Trio), I can tell you that quality-wise, Crimson lost quite a bit. Can you imagine any group losing out both Bruford and Levin calibre musicians and still hold greatness? Don't get me wrong here, Matselotto and Gunn are certainly no slouches and they actually play superbly well, but the problem resides elsewhere: the songwriting of both Construction Of Light and Power To Believe are probably responsible of my lack of interest and more pre-occupying, my boredom!! I never thought I'd get bored of Crimson, but it happens here (actually the ProjeCKts had also bored me to death, but this was an aside) but with this one it did: I never got to the end of both concerts (actually I did, but I zapped ahead tiredly), so I think this tells it all. I had not gotten a chance to see this "line-up" live, either and I am not sure that if I had done so, I would enjoy this DVD more - and retrospectively I was lucky enough to not having seen them.

If I must choose one concert over the other, I will take the Shepherd's Bush 00 concert although I think the TCOL album is inferior to the 03 tour of TPTB. Don't ask me why, I haven't a clue! But anyway, this double DVD is certainly very high priced, and I was glad I could rent it. I never got to check out the bonus but felt absolutely no need to either. I never thought I'd give such a low rating to a KC product.

Inprovise us!

This is the latest King Crimson DVD i watched, a difference with CD albums, when i watch a DVD it is easier for me to write a review, while with a CD i need at least more than 5 listens to apreciatte it before reviewing it, with a DVD i just need a couple of times because after all im "qualifying" the content as a video, the images, the concert , the performance as an spectator or audience, obviously i am qualifying the music, the set list and what it provokes on me, but for me after two times that i watched it, i decided to talk to you about it.

I was very curious about this one, a friend of mine lend it to me and after all i was not that happy as i would imagined. I´ve seen Crimson twice in Mexico City, the last one was in 2004 if im not wrong, during their Eyes Wide Open tour, so actually the performance that i saw and the performances in this DVD are pretty alike.

This is a set which contains 2 DVD´s, the first one is a concert from Tokyo in 2003 with 14 songs in the list, as usual some improvisations and zero classic themes, just new music taken mostly by their last two albums "The Construction of Light" and "The Power to Believe", i like more the second one, but i prefer some Discipline´s or Thrak´s songs which were not performed here, well i remember only "One Time" but that´s all, anyway the point is that persoanlly i prefer other Crimson eras than this, but i do enjoy this anyways, i´d like to point out that obviously this DVD features their latest 4 members, named Belew-Fripp-Gunn-Mastelotto, so you can have an idea of what is this about.

I enjoy watching and listening to some of their instrumental and weird moments when everyone is playing something different and maybe dissonant but at the same time everything sounds as a one body and that´s really good, that´s what i love about it for instance, i remember in the Deja Vroom video, i love when they played Indiscipline and everyone is doing something way too different for each others.

This DVD 1 also features "Tokyo Sound & Camera Check", which it´s 3 different "Indiscretion" parts, good to check them if you have time.

DVD 2 is a concert back in the years, it was in 2000 year at London, so it wasn´t a "The Power to Believe" supporting tour, here you will find some older songs like "Dinosaur", "Sex, Sleep ,Eat, Drink ,Dream" (which i dont like) or a pretty nice Belew solo performance of "Three of a Perfect Pair" which sounds good with his acoustic guitar, i think i enjoyed more this second DVD than the first one, also there´s a song when Fripp starts laughing at Belew´s weird sound, strange to see him with that big smile, i love to see the performance of Trey Gunn, he plays a very important role on the band, so do the others, but i always pay attention in his warr guitar. Again this DVd with some nice improvisations, and a surprise at the end, the last song is called "Heroes", i honestly don´t like it that much, but as a surprise,it could have been good, it iw a cover by the way.

This second DVD features a great bunch of Improvisations, it is called "Improvising Crimson" and this is a part that i liked so much, it´s great to see all their improvisations and say, gosh what a great band, surely you will enjoy this part a lot.

After all i was not that happy with this DVD, it is good, believe me, and probably you might enjoy it more than me, 3 stars good but non-essential.

The music may be top-notch, but this concert DVD did little to convince me that I ever need to see Crimson live. Fripp sits like a shy, introspective British house-gnome tucked behind his expansive sound equipment tinkering magnificently but seemingly emotionlessly with his myriad bells and whistles. The others aren't much better! Trey Gunn stands rooted in place robotically while the bearded, un-photogenic Mastelotto slouches horribly as he hammers at the drums angrily. Only Belew shows any charisma... but it's almost embarrassing. He swaggers about in a v-necked undershirt (un-tucked) and canvas Dockers looking like someone's drunk uncle at a holiday party. Save yourself the disappointment and just go buy the band's three excellent studio albums instead (you won't be able to tell the difference between them and this live performance anyway!).

This DVD has been made after the recording of the CD "Power to Believe" and contains 2 DVDS. The first one is filmed in Japan in 2003 and was captured beautifully with a impressive live show. The set list is perfect, the only song that i would have replace is "One Time" from "Thrak", but maybe they included this song to change the pace of the music. There is a lot of songs from their last two albums. The surround sound is something incredible here, not clear who mixed this, but he should be hire by every Prog bands. The second DVD is closer to the quality of a very good bootleg with some extras songs in the improvisation mode, which is not the way i prefer King Crimson. It should please the hardcore fans of the band. Is there someone who doesn't know this band live yet, and want their best DVD, this is the one. You can't go wrong with this adventurous Prog rock that alternate between some lighter and more accessible songs with some that are twisted and tortured.