It’s Bill Bruford who strikes the opening notes of the first three performances at Los Angeles’ Wiltern Theatre in a surging improvisation. Having rejoined the ranks of an augmented and altered King Crimson a year earlier, Bruford told Rolling Stone at the start of this tour, “It was exactly as though nothing had happened in the last ten years. I live in England, like Robert, and we hadn’t exchanged more than a sentence or two in that period, but as soon as we all got into a room together, you picked up where you left off. In the beginning, I assumed we’d be continuing musically where we left off in 1984 as well. No. We were going to return to a sound more from the ‘70s, more to do with Red — a thick, intelligent Metal kind of sound.”
Nowhere is that thick metal sound more in evidence than on the brutalist construction that is THRAK and its chaotic centre. Fragmentary and acerbic, the musical shards hurled back and forth between the six players is an all-to graphic explanation of Bruford’s oft-quoted description of THRAK as being a ‘hard-hat area.’
But it’s not all heavy stuff. Indiscipline, where Bill's playing across the rhythmic line is a bravura masterclass in building tension, is contains some unexpected moments of release via some off-the-cuff humour.
“I do remember one thing,” says Belew after the fusillade of drums, “I’m glad Tony plugged in” referring to Tony forgetting to connect his Stick earlier in the set. Levin can be heard roaring with laughter after the comment. But there’s more. Following an unusually laconic recitation from Belew, the entire band apart from Levin is caught napping as they completely miss Belew’s “I did” as their cue to come back in. One can only imagine how broad the grins are across the stage at this point. A lovely moment
