CRIMSO REVIEWED
Posted by Sid Smith on Oct 22, 2007 - This post is archived and may no longer be relevant

The Great Deceiver reissue is picking up some favourable press from both expected and unexpected quarters. Here’s what the Wire magazine had to say about The Great Deceiver reissue.

Despite Chris Cutler’s insistence to the contrary, the 1972-74 line-up of King Crimson was one of the strongest improvising rock groups ever assembled.  In bassist John Wetton and drummer Bill Bruford they had the most powerful of rhythm sections, fusing the trance-funk slipperiness of Can’s Jaki Liebezeit and Holger Czukay, the brutality of Led Zeppelin’s John Bonham and John Paul Jones and the intricacy of Henry Cow’s John Greaves (and later Georgie Born) and the aforementioned Culter. Violinist David Cross brought in elements of ethnic folk and austere conservatoire modernism; Robert Fripp, fresh from his recording adventures with Brian Eno, had just taken flight as an instrumentalist and composer, dragging his cohorts by the scruff of the neck into virgin territory. Finally, there was the crucial input of percussionist Jamie Muir, who spent only a few months with the group but whose background in the London Improv scene had a radical effect on Crimson’s work. He’s all over this collection, in spirit if not body.

That Crimson managed to make such a radical noise in front of mainstream audiences is remarkable; although never quite in the Prog rock first division with Yes and ELP, they were certainly close. Had 1973’s Larks’ Tongues In Aspic been their first album, rather than the 1969 line-up’s massively popular pomp-rock abomination In The Court Of The Crimson King, they would probably have been scraping around for the same gigs as Cutler and co.

Until the original release of this mammoth box set in the early 90s – of which this present edition is a straight reissue – the improvising side of the group was under-represented on record. Happily, The Great Deceiver is chock full of the group in full spontaneous –composition splendour, from the strongly Muir-informed abstract pieces from the 1973 concerts to the bludgeoning atonal boogie workouts they were purveying a year later. While their true contemporaries like the electric-era Miles Davis groups and the most adventurous German groups continue to garner the plaudits, Crimson remain a much maligned and misunderstood beast. Forget Prog; file this next to Dark Magus or Tago Mago as some of the rawest and most exciting music ever committed to disc.

Keith Moline

And over in Classic Rock magazine

Essential live collection reissued

The studio albums King Crimson released in their commercial heyday between 1969 and 1974 never quite captured the power and intensity of the incendiary improvisations which the band integrated into their regular live set.

Such was the tightness of the playing by Fripp, Wetton, Bruford and violinist David Cross, audiences in the 1970s had little idea that such fearsomely complex instrumentals heard between songs were actually composed right off the top of the band’s collective head.

This four CD set, first released in 1992, is a must-have for Crimson fans. It , showcases the clout and subtlety Crimson deployed in equal measure, mixing spine-splitting hard rock riffs with breathtakingly inventive flights that set them apart from their contemporaries, and remains devastatingly impressive.
Sid Smith
8/10

Latest

Photos

Photos

Photos

DISCOVER THE DGM HISTORY
.

1940s
1950s
1960s
1970s
1980s
1990s
2000s
2010s
.