King Crimson: The Night Watch

In its own way, this is every bit as heavy as the Pixies were yesterday. The tracks are longer, giving less breathing space, so in digestive terms it's actually heavier. In the sleeve notes, Robert Fripp writes, "Between 1973/4 KC had an increasingly loud bass player of staggering strength and imagination," and you can see what he means. This recording certainly outweighs Three of a Perfect Pair by some margin. At the same time, it's not as exhausting as Vroom Vroom, because it is occasionally leavened by some quite beautiful melodies, as on Exiles.

I bought this soon after it came out, about ten years ago, by mail order direct from DGM. I think it was the first of the mass of KC live releases that I felt I really couldn't afford to miss out on. Over time that boundary keeps moving and, after listening to this yesterday, I couldn't resist buying another one. But it's the same problem as I have with the Ace catalogue: if you buy one, then shouldn't you really buy 20 because there's at least 20 as good as each other. That's why I said I'd like a subscription to all these albums so I can hear them without buying permanent copies. I don't think that's going to happen soon, sadly: DGM will neither create their own subscription service nor license someone else's service. So I'm left buying one or two here and there.

What I didn't realise when I bought this double CD was how much of the music I already had. Twenty seven of the 47 minutes of Starless and Bible Black were actually recorded at this concert. But that's OK, the remainder of 'new' material was worth the price, and the 'old' stuff has been stripped of its few overdubs and remixed.

MusicBrainz entry for disc 1, disc 2 Wikipedia entry for this album Rate Your Music entry for this album