My review of King Crimson, Live at the Orpheum, today at All About Jazz.
It was the reunion nobody expected. After years of touring in circumstances less than ideal—and, for him, distinctly and increasingly unpleasant—co-founder and only remaining original member Robert Fripp was as clear as can be that he was done with his flagship group King Crimson. A brief four-city, eleven-date 2008 tour—with a revamped version of the 2000-2003 quartet, also featuring Adrian Belew, Trey Gunn and Pat Mastelotto reunited but with previous bassist/stick man Tony Levin replacing Gunn and a second drummer, then-Porcupine Tree's Gavin Harrison, added—documented by the digital download-only
Park West, Chicago, Illinois August 7, 2008 (DGM Live, 2008), seemed the last nail in the coffin. And so it was with great surprise to the group's legion of fans when Fripp announced, in September, 2013, that he was bringing Crimson back into active duty, albeit with a significantly altered lineup.
In retrospect it shouldn't have been that much of a surprise. In 2011, A Scarcity of Miracles (Panegyric) was released as "A King Crimson ProjeKct," the ProjeKcts being previously associated with experimental permutations and combinations of members from the 1994-1997 double trio Crimson that, in addition to Fripp, Belew, Gunn and Mastelotto, also included Levin and drummer Bill Bruford from the '80s-era incarnation responsible for albums including Discipline (E.G., 1981).
Scarcity was, however, an entirely different beast. It began as a duo project of improvisations between Fripp and guitarist/vocalist Jakko M. Jakszyk—who, despite being around for many years, had only begun to make a bigger name for himself since the turn of the millennium as a member of the Crimson alum-manned 21st Century Schizoid Band and his own superb Bruised Romantic Glee Club (Iceni, 2006). When the pair listened to the music they'd recorded, however, they decided to recruit saxophonist/flautist Mel Collins, last heard as a member of Crimson on Islands (Island, 1971) and associated touring that resulted in the group fracturing, but not before leaving a low-fi and largely dismissed live album, Earthbound (Island, 1972)—though he did make a guest appearance on Red (Island, 1975), the group's influential 1970s studio swan song. From there, one thing led to another and, with Jakszyk taking the recordings home to write lyrics and reshape the material into something more closely resembling song form, the trio became a quintet with the addition of Levin and Harrison.
Sadly—and unfairly—the album received mixed reviews, despite being one of the most flat-out beautiful song-form recordings Fripp has ever made with anyone, largely because it seemed that, with the Crimson ProjeKct moniker, critics felt somehow duty-bound to draw comparisons with virtually every Crimson album that came before. Jakszyk—in addition to being a remarkable guitarist as capable of pulling off lightning fast legato lines à la Allan Holdsworth as he is solos of profound lyricism and perfect simplicity—is an emotive but non-melismatic singer with a clearly distinct and recognizable voice, but far too many critics seemed unable to assess him on his own merits, with some comparing him to original Crimson vocalist Greg Lake, others to mid- '70s Crimson's John Wetton...and still others to both Lake and Wetton. They were all wrong.
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Originally Posted by chalkpie
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