Alex Mundy’s latest exploration of the Crimson catalalogue centres upon the closing moments of Red and its final track, Starless. It’s always interesting hearing something so familiar, so deeply ingrained into the fabric of our listening life that it’s almost impossible to imagine it being any other way.
By revisiting the multitracks we hear, for the first time, a guitar solo where Mel Collins’ extemporising would later be placed. By stripping and paring away some other instrumentation on the coda we can more clearly discern the harmonic and textural additions that formed part of Fripp’s approach to the recording of the piece, some that made it through to the final and some that didn't.
These kinds of reveals, while not seeking to usurp the place of the finished work, do at least allow Crimheads to get a better understanding of all the elements, heard and not heard, that go into the making of a classic Crim track.
