STARLESS

These nights wound time.

The King Crimson megaboxes return with a massive, sprawling set dedicated to the final album of the early/mid 70s trilogy, Starless & Bible Black. Once again, this set follows the Crimson King on tour, this time as it sojourns across Europe in late 1973, early 1974. Jamie Muir had recently left the band, leaving the band a quartet for this go around. Muir's presence is still felt, as Bruford's set up has greatly expanded to include large swaths of percussions and allsorts, which were Muir's territory when he was in the band. Nevertheless, the band remains fierce with sharp teeth and dangerous claws. All four have grown together as players and improvisers, getting more comfortable with the repertoire and ethos of the band. Even with the most unpredictable element absent from Crim, there is no shortage of risks taken here. And the results are splendid.

Starless complies 16 shows across 23 discs. The first three are double disk affairs, while the middle sets are singles (although it must be noted two of them are continued are the three 'bonus' disks). Of the 16 shows, 7 are unreleased (while others were released as a download only option from the DGM site). Although this does include an audio version of their French TV appearance, which is much shorter than a typical Crimson show was at the time. Weirdly, there is also a download only show from Germany added to the box, which doesn't make much sense to me, as adding one more disc to this box couldn't make that much more of a difference price or aesthetics wise. Each show has the band running through its standard 70s fare (Easy Money, Starless, Larks II, etc), peppered with improvs. Unsurprisingly, the improvs are the highlight of the box (once again). There are 18 new improvs in this set, 8 of which are previously unreleased in any format. It's hard to choose favorites here, but I'll go with Mainz, Gottingen, Heidelberg, and Kassel. But joy abounds on each of these discs. The sound quality of the majority of shows is good to very good (aside from the two shows that are taken from restored bootlegs, but even these are easily passible in these terms). Unfortunately, there are a few issues this set. First off, while these shows are (mostly) professionally recorded, there is still the problem of tapes dropping out, leaving songs incomplete. Luckily, this isn't as big a problem as The Road To Red, but there are still 10 incomplete recordings, which when things are really cooking does feel like a bit of a gut punch. Secondly, there are a couple of odd choices here, like having a shorter version of The Night Watch show in Amsterdam added as a disk (especially with the aforementioned download only show tacked on). There is also a fair bit of overlap with the King Crimson Collectors Club releases, which are all excellent, but for the dedicated collector is superfluous. As with the last box, I certainly don't feel any sense of being cheated or underwhelmed with the contents of the box, but there is a part of me that wishes a stronger presence from the unknown. But these issues are relatively minor, especially when comparing them with the advantages of this set.

All in all, this is a wonderful document from a rather busy and exploratory era of King Crimson. This European tour would comprise the basis for the studio album Starless & Bible Black, and as a result we get a very well recorded string of concerts from one of the world's leading progressive rock bands, arguably at the height of its powers. All four combatants fight hard, with the emphasis added to Wetton and Bruford, perhaps the most formable rhythm section in prog, standing out the most (and certainly the loudest). With 16 shows, Starless is the largest megabox yet (and would be tied with the most prolific when this line of megaboxsets are complete) and while there is some overlap, combining this fact with it being the best sounding 70s boxset, make this a hard box to beat. (The addition of the three 'bonus' discs are a wonderful gesture on DGMs part, adding a whole new concert of an American show, completing two of the 'proper' concert discs, and providing a couple audio curios, that round out this set nicely.) For Crimson fanatics, this is basically essential. On my personal scale, I give this a 3.5- 3.75, which I will round up to 4 stars for the purposes of this website. If you only own one King Crimson megabox, make it Starless. Conditionally recommended.

Whereas both the Sailors' Tales boxed set and the Larks' Tongues Complete Recordings box fill out their space with some recordings of less-than-stellar sound quality, owing to high-quality recordings of the band at the time being somewhat thin on the ground, the Starless box is another matter entirely.

Taking in the European tour of 1973 during which the material which fed into the Starless & Bible Black album was recorded, Starless & Bible Black itself, and the 1974 European tour following its release, the boxed set provides the complete surviving "blue tapes" - the legendary soundboard recordings from the gigs in question. Whilst some of the gigs are not present in complete versions due to the tape running out at one point or another, those gigs which were recorded in full are absolutely stellar, and the incomplete recordings are really excellent, with their incompleteness being their only flaw.

With the band enjoying both a dynamite repertoire of songs at this time and a well-honed knack for improvisation which makes every gig worth listening to in its own right, Starless is a true treasury. Don't think of it as a set to be gobbled up all at once - think of it as an instant collection of the very best of King Crimson's output from late 1973 to early 1974, something to pick out one show at a time from rather than listening to them all in rapid succession. Whilst costly, the amount of material you get for your money is truly excellent value; if you are keen enough on the band as it existed in this era to want even one or two of these live shows, you're probably enthusiastic enough to enjoy the entire set.