The state of flux typifying this period threatened to engulf Belew who had qualms not only about the amount of time Fripp envisaged the new group should tour but also his own role within the new line-up.  In September, as Fripp was packing his bags at his house in Dorset ahead of his return to America he received a call from Crimson's manager Richard Chadwick with the news that Belew had quit. "Crimson usually breaks up after tours or during rehearsals,” Fripp noted at the time. “The Double Duo is a first in that it has broken up before rehearsing, recording and touring.  Even for Crimson, this is an achievement.”

These teething problems were overcome and the new quartet decamped to Belew’s basement studio with the challenge of writing and recording an album’s worth of new material in just eight weeks. They succeeded, in fact, in recording two albums, as they also completed an album of improvisations, under the name “Projekct X”. The title track of the “The Construkction of Light” album - with its sinuous bassline which Tony Levin has described as one of the most difficult he has ever encountered – has become a staple of King Crimson shows thereafter.

Whereas their first album had been recorded in Belew’s home studio, for their second, Fripp and Belew asked Gunn and Mastelotto to come up with a shortlist of studios. The Tracking Room in Nashville was Gunn and Mastelotto’s favourite from the four or five they presented. “We never thought for a second that Robert and Adrian would go for it. It’s mondo, dude. That place is where Mutt Lange works. You can put a 90-piece orchestra in there. There is a stone room, a wood room, it’s just the most over-the-top place I’ve ever seen. The budget was maybe $3000 a day for this place. There’s no fucking way they’d ever pick this place,” laughs Mastelotto, “but that’s what Robert did!”

They also used an external producer, Gene Freeman, better known as Machine, who admits to being daunting as the sessions got underway “King Crimson in a way largely produce themselves live. They have production as a part of what they do. Their guitars have midi pick-ups and are simultaneously feeding synths. Trey’s Warr guitar splits to multiple amps, has a bass register and an upper register. The same for Adrian. It was insane and this would all be recorded live. Whereas I’d worked with a lot of younger bands and this stuff is all done in layers in the studio. It’s not all performed. Not only is King Crimson’s music performed but then there are portions of it which are improvisational and you are recording this massive session.”

The resulting album, “The Power To Believe”, King Crimson’s thirteenth studio album, opens with the deceptively genteel a capella “The Power To Believe I” before launching into instrumental tour de forces such as Level Five, EleKtrik and Dangerous Curves. An album of epic proportions.

In 2019, the vast live output of this band, together with the Projekcts were combined in the Heaven and Earth boxed set. This retrospective also allowed for the album “The Construcktion of Light” to be revisited. Pat Mastelotto had never been entirely happy with the use of the electronic V-Drum set up used on the original, an idea inherited from the Projekcts. And with the original multitracks not available for a surround sound re-issue, the drums were entirely re-recorded and the album re-issued as “The Reconstrucktion of Light”.