There’s no getting around the fact that the music on this audience recording is having to compete with a tape hiss that sounds like a bracing gale-force wind coming in off a stormy sea. And yet, being Crimheads we persevere and stoically turn our faces, and by association, our ears to the wind and listen as hard as we can.
Is it worth the effort? Emphatically, yes. The quality picks up a notch midway through Easy Money enabling us to enjoy one of Fripp’s more atonal scramblings around the fretboard during his solo and into a build that’s truly astonishing.
It’s interesting to hear what the vagaries of the taper’s position do to the music. For example in Fracture, David Cross’s embellishments on the main section take on a decidedly abstract demeanour. The blowing section of Fracture, rendered adrift from its chordal anchor due to the poor sonics, is transformed into some malevolent elemental force.
After an extended improv section, when the grinding guitar curtails the aleatoric explorations, Cross’s distorted pianet is again transformed into a wild electronic texture. The racing, ascending sections to the coda, with some dramatic Mellotron additions, sounds as though its on the verge of exploding. Which it duly does albeit a controlled explosion.
As a side note, it’s interesting hearing Exiles introduced in the same manner as when the 1969 group played that opening chord sequence back in the day when it was titled Mantra. Featuring an incandescent Fripp solo the audience shows their approval by giving it extended applause.
A good show overall but one for dedicated Crimheads rather than the merely curious.
