There’s no doubting the power of this six-piece incarnation and the new material that coalesced around the making of the Vrooom and THRAK releases. In concert, they added weight and energy to material that had first appeared in the 80s. As Trey Gunn observed in an interview in 1996 “Our repertoire is very varied, King Crimson is very special group. It seems it is more heterogeneous than in the beginning. On the tour, we play various music, such as Red, 'Vrooom' or 'Waiting Man'. Undoubtedly, we wanted to create really heavy music. Usually, you have only heavy sound. Powerful guitars, electronically deformed vocal, loud drums...But it doesn't mean you hear heavy music. One of our tasks was to create heavy music, music which frightens.”
One such moment in the set was THRAK which is a musical melting pot wherein all kinds of diverse and frequently contradictory ingredients are gleefully thrown in.
After THRAK, there’s a rare moment deviating from the by-now standard setlist as Fripp, Belew, and Gunn exchange sustained lines with Levin underpinning the ebb and flow on upright bass. It’s a string quartet that only occasionally appeared in the lifetime of the Double Trio. It’s a great shame as it brings a different mood and character to the evening. For all the aural shock-and-awe fireworks that were a defining feature of THRAK, this three-minute interlude maps out an intriguing, somewhat ambiguous space that this listener at least wishes Crimson had explored in much greater depth.
