Bearing in mind that Starless & Bible Black had only just been released, the audience in Besancon would have only been familiar with just one of the nine tracks captured on this soundboard tape. That’s quite a journey.
On The Great Deceiver be sure to listen out for Bruford flying by the seat of his pants with those rolling toms skipping off Fripp and Wetton’s unison between the first and second verse, and then into some bucking-bronco turbulence during the third verse. It’s hairy stuff and they almost don’t make it but it’s precisely that riskiness that makes this band so interesting and exciting. This is a storming Fracture that never lets up. Even the slightly wayward tuning on the final theme can’t derail the crackling energies that this band conjures out of the air.
The first improv hovers between bellicose astringency and detached experimentation before coming to focus in on a riff that would eventually become refined into the opening of One More Red Nightmare, and then taking flight. That it slides seamlessly into Starless, and a gloriously flawless rendition of the track makes this concert simply astonishing and a must-have if it’s not in your collection.
