My review of King Crimson at The Warfield, today at All About Jazz.
It's been eleven years since King Crimson last toured extensively, barring a brief four-city, fourteen-date tour in 2008 that acted as the final nail in the coffin of its 28- year run with pyrotechnic guitarist/vocalist Adrian Belew. Never a fan of the gruelling toll of the road, guitarist/keyboardist Robert Fripp—the group's only remaining founding member—seemed resolute in retiring from active touring after that 2008 jaunt, though he has continued to be active on other fronts, specifically his ongoing soundscapes series, last documented on the characteristically boundary-pushing orchestral collaboration with Andrew Keeling and David Singleton, The Wine of Silence (DGM Live, 2012); his ongoing duo with reed and woodwind multi-instrumentalist Theo Travis, which released Discretion (Panegyric, 2014) a couple of months back; occasional reunions with producer/sound artist Brian Eno, the pair's most recent album an archival find, Live in Paris 28.05.1975 (Opal/DGM Live, 2014; and a duo with guitarist/vocalist Jakko M. Jakszyk that gradually morphed into a quintet with Crimson alum reed and woodwind multi-instrumentalist Mel Collins, longtime Crimson bassist/stick player Tony Levin and then-Porcupine Tree drummer Gavin Harrison, who'd also made his first Crimson appearance during that short 2008 run.
That last group is significant because, while it didn't manage to acquire the Crimson moniker—its sole album, A Scarcity of Miracles (Panegyric, 2011), relegated to the status of "Crimson ProjeKct"—it was the seed for a revived King Crimson in 2014 that, in typical Fripp fashion, created plenty of advance buzz for an unorthodox configuration that flipped things completely around by placing three drummers (Harrison, Crimson alum Pat Mastelotto and R.E.M./Nine Inch Nails' Bill Rieflin) in the front line, with the guitarist, Jakszyk, Levin and Collins constituting the back line.
The group's ten-city, twenty-date tour was, in many ways, a test for Fripp, to determine if he could break the mould of touring in the unwieldy context of a large group in the rock world and turn what has traditionally been a difficult, unpleasant and stressful experience for the guitarist into an actually enjoyable one.
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