Music Arcades: King Crimson: THRaKaTTaK

This is one of those albums where you have to keep your wits about you if listening on a computer: several times the tuned percussion sounds uncannily like a system, email or error alert. You find yourself scanning all the windows you have open, only to realise the sound came from the CD.

You'd think, with the number of King Crimson albums I own, that I'd have a pretty clear idea of whether I like them. For sure, there's some stuff that I enjoy easily and unequivocally — In the Court…, Larks Tongues…, Discipline. Then there are things like Red — a challenge, but probably a rewarding one — while Three of a Perfect Pair seems to be just off the boil. Of the post-1995 incarnation I have only this and another live album, both of which leave me nonplussed yet curious.

The conceit of THRaKaTTaK is that it's a compilation of 19 performances of the piece Thrak, recorded during a tour of Japan and the US. There are only eight tracks, because some of the performances have spliced together (like Frank Zappa did on Does Humor Belong in Music?). But it's not especially repetitive, because of the heavy use of improvisation in the performances. The pieces are so distinct that many have different titles — including "This night wounds time", a reference to Tom Phillips painting on the back cover of Starless and Bible Black.

The comparison that springs to mind is with that other compilation of live mischief-making, Neil Young's Arc. Both Neil and Crim are showing us how they can play avant garde music — feedback concrète and free improv respectively — in venues with several thousand seats. Even if the seats' occupants nipped off to the bar during these passages.

It's a very attractive idea, and a beautifully designed and packaged CD. Back in 1996, when I got it, such care over the package was almost without precedent. But, boy, it's difficult to love the sound it makes.