King Crimson: Music Is Our Friend album review
Vinyl fans can now celebrate what is likely to be King Crimson’s American final performance, in Washington DC in September 2021, with this triple set.
With the band having ground to a halt twice in the first decade of this century, hopes were not high when Robert Fripp re-formed the band in 2014, particularly as there had been no new material since 2003. But the self-proclaimed “seven-headed beast” featured three drummers and precipitated a major overhaul of the back catalogue.
The results were clearly audible on 2016’s Radical Action and the changes have continued since. Indeed, the pandemic pandemonium that surrounded their 2021 US tour seemed to spur them on.
Neurotica, from 1982’s Beat, was added to the set-list, along with the restored middle section of Larks’ Tongues In Aspic Part 1. There are memorable renditions of Starless and Islands, and an awesome encore of 21st Century Schizoid Man, one of three tracks from their 1969 debut.
