“Guitars require tuning after beatings,” Belew informs an enthusiastic crowd on this highly listenable audience recording. The team had just finished their usual guided tour of a gothic noise-making factory that is Industry, and the corrosive, gnawing at the edges of traditional songwriting that constitutes Dig Me. Even after all these years since the original performance, it’s still something of a surprise that this kind of material goes down as well as it does with the punters.
Of course, King Crimson’s appeal has always been their shrewd blend of tightly defined structures on the one hand and the borderline malevolent atonal battering on the other. Little wonder then that the crowd gives a cheer of encouragement during Indiscipline when Adrian in mid-lyric quips, “Just for the heck of it I think I’ll break this neck right off the guitar”
Elsewhere in the set Sartori In Tangier and The Sheltering Sky produce ecstatic, rapturous flurries that still send a shiver down a receptive spine. Although nearing the end of a tour that had seen the group’s interpersonal relationships splinter, it’s reassuring that they’re still capable of producing such high-calibre performances as they do here. Completists will note that the first two numbers on the setlist, Entry Of The Crims and Larks’ Tongues In Aspic III, are sadly absent on this particular recording.
10 February 2025
