I was thumbing through the new LPs in the record shop the other day and this record caught my eye. I simply had to buy it because of the album art. I rarely buy new LPs these days as I prefer to listen to CD quality music. This record is an icon of progressive rock and of course I bought a copy when it first came out in 1969. Like many of my LP records someone borrowed it and did not return it.
I have always loved the early King Crimson records and I have ITCOTCK on CD. The record is regarded as the first genuine progressive rock album by many commentators and it is a seminal work. King Crimson's music is not based on blues but on jazz, folk and classical music and is symphonic in style. But of course it uses guitar, bass and drums.
The band featured the following superb musicians.
Greg Lake on bass guitar and vocals. Lake joined Emmerson, Lake and Palmer after leaving King Crimsom.
Robert Fripp on Guitar.
Michael Giles on percussion and backing vocals.
Ian McDonald on woodwind instruments and keyboards including the mellotron and vibes.
Peter Sinfield wrote the lyrics.
The first track 21st Schizoid Century Man leads the way: it is a frenetic fast paced jazz based song using the full panoply of King Crimson instrumentation and Lake's deliberately distorted voice.
The album progresses through folk, classical and jazz styled songs to the finale: In The Court OF The Crimson King. This imaginative track is almost surreal and the lyrics take you to a different kingdom.
What singles King Crimson out is the superb musicianship and flawless playing. They are truly great musicians and up there with John Renbourne, Miles Davis, Dave Brubeck, Paul Desmond and dare I say it Jimmy Hendrix.
The music is more avant-garde than far out - like the Pink Floyd. It sounded truly wonderful and strange at the same time to naive progressive rock fans way back in 1969 and all of my male friends loved it. Funnily, enough it did not appeal to women so much. My wife will not let me play it in her presence even though she is a big fan of the Moody Blues.
If you have not heard this album then I strongly recommend that you buy it; you will not be disappointed by the music or the sound quality if you like progressive rock. It is probably one of the best popular music records of all time and ranks up there with Sgt Pepper.
On a technical note this album is one of the best produced LPs I have got my hands on. In my time thousands of LPs have passed through my hands and all of them have had production flaws such as minor scratches and scuffs. This record has none of them as far as I can see or hear. The LP sounded better than any other version of the record that I heard in the sixties and seventies despite my modest turntable.
This did not mean that I could not hear any snap crackle or pop in the quiet bits. The record was difficult to remove from its sleeve which meant there was a build up of static. This combined with the high atmospheric and dry pressure combined to create enough static electricity to make every piece of dust in my living room air to stick to the record.
I earthed myself whilst cleaning the record with a carbon fibre brush but to no avail. The record started playing so quietly that I thought that the volume was turned completely down or that I had miscued the needle. However, the static built up as I played the record and by the end of the album the needle was full of dust and I could hear the dreaded noise on the quiet bits of the music run off at the end of the record. Of course this spoilt what should have been a great musical experience. You just cannot win with an LP.
Even at low volumes I could hear some noises which sounded like the sound from a tape machine or from the mellotron but this was only in the quiet bits. I could also hear some hiss which I thought was noise from the record. But when I downloaded the 320 kbps MP3 I could hear the same. The hissing noise was from the master tapes. The LP and MP3 were of sufficient high resolution to expose flaws picked up by the master tapes- but so what? The music was not spoilt by any of this.
The LP record and the MP3 version sounded remarkably similar but the mellotron sounded more shrill in the digital version. The inherent harmonic distortion involved in LP replay was probably "softening and thickening the sound" to make the shrill notes sound sweeter to my ears. However, 320 kbps MP3 and CD are to my ears of higher fidelity than LP; the mellotron probably would have sounded shrill if you had monitored it directly through good speakers or headphones.
Both the LP and MP3 have been remastered with the approval of Robert Fripp and they sound great and better than ever before. This LP and MP3 download are well worth the money - £20 - as far as I am concerned.
I shall only play the record on special occasions and stick to listening to the MP3 and CD versions. I am thinking of "digitising" the LP itself using Audacity so that I can retain LP quality sound without wearing out the record. It will then be a trip back to the 1969 every time I play the album digitally but minus the dust.
