EARTHBOUND

Earthbound, as a vicious defect and a record romp crossover, is one of the negative down-faming known "stories", at least appreciating it simply and, alternatively, from inside the music "crimsonic" movement. If the story is used as irony instead of a healthy appreciation, it is even more spicy, more homogenously respected, as it is weakly said too. So Earthbound, as live and as the project in between Crimson doing virulent art and Crimson doing virulent (prog default) rock (artistically put, to not say it moronically), disappoints as quality and as a moment who would have preferably been an unrepeatable gem, a thick blood music and a large echo. It's a failure; and it is one in which, I was saying, you check all the senses before considering yourself "ripped-off" by broken sounds and moldy mastering. The extremes go towards judging the album as a radical egocentric decision made by Robert Fripp. In a way, as much as the special detail doesn't interest me, I see instead the ideal of a "live" in the eclectic-genuine Crimson smash period as one purely fantasist, or, by Earthbound, salutary. The hope of this isn't, in the end lost, given another "early prog times" recording placing in a live, 30 years later since this "infamous one" (Ladies Of The Road, CD 1), as other moments, more regressively, share such things. Still, for a progressive, conceptual, artistic, experimental, surreal, dark-orientated, caustic and melodic visceral emphasis of Crimson in the early 70s, a more representative and euphoric, plus fully achieved live would have landed better in the ensemble or the epilogue of the period; a period which, in itself, went excellent (only in particular preferential). Stepping outside this regret, there are the great and free impressions or ironies through which Earthbound sounds bad, weak, maniacal, depressive, irrepressible, as shrapnel noise and latent impressionistic schizophrenia. Etc. (of course)

About the recording's quality, my view is comfortably indisposed by the general flash cleanse miss, which makes music to be as sophisticated as it wants, but of minimal, chopped beauty. The recordings is badly scratching the ears, making out of a hard-listening default pleasure a fight to resist the album. The most annoying details come right as the most intrinsic, so that music's scratch staying drenched and, besides the bombatistic, mandible, defiant. The sound proves a jam of all the break-out, whilst, by finally some taste, a different kind of disturbance catches voice, in the posture of a concrete decibel stepped-on play and of an unaesthetic pedaled intensity. Earthbound is doubtless a crash of musical performance viewpoint and one of sound-producing too, and this, unfortunately, can't sound exaggerate; perhaps only a too suggestive remark.

In the Crimson music that's played, somewhat, things stay better, though not by a chance excellent. I've already said it, a live from the immediate period would have deserved a plus (or a surplice) of magic, frenzy and indubitable quality; have the small groove on the side, it would have seized all frivolous useless shivers. Otherwise, this "mistaken live" has only good moments, some even interesting, acting in a performance of experimentalism, pure schizoid and mental-digressive tones, it site well in the power asthenia and in the rotten symbols, and characterizes classic artists in a treating way of living up their personal nemesis in the side-syringing pathos. Extremely visceral and virulent, as well as unforgiving in an experimental dominating ardor, Earthbound is heavy listening, for fans who forgot the boredom of broken music or the much ignorant lack of character. But even in these points of critic that are from captivating down to acceptable, appears, typical, the complex of bad interpretation, of jam music and of hardly thought art, of a terrible improvisational passion, of a straight dire effect and of a poisoning elixir for the too evaluative soul. Maybe something cacophonous has ambiance as well. Everything tends to be style "grudge", well-pointed only if it doesn't mark the great tiresome of dead times and beaten to a bleed and a sheer corpulence sounds. 21st Century Schizoid Man, the great schlager, useless to be considered otherwise than essential and eternal, has an execrable vocal art, but the powerful instrumental, from the middle of the piece, is quite good class. Peoria is something I do consider a composition gem, too bad of the new sound handicap, entering the dissimulation. I never ever liked The Sailor's Tale, still here it's crispy plus macabre. After this, the joke of the jam and the schist-phonic thickens, the last too pieces share the greatest sin. Earthbound is ephemeral in itself, whilst Groon is too a gem composition, ruined by mud caliber, orgasmic loud-louder-loudest collapse.

For an unbelievable heavy rock cognitive orientation, it is a full shame and blame that the live album is a chop of sound quality and a killing bash art. It is a shame and blame that a quasi-perfect (art) period has such a "live" epilogue and such a "performance" comfort. Un-prodigious, on top of everything. No for Earthbound, no with a regrettable shrug.