Just nine days before stepping onto the stage with Bill Bruford and Tony Levin, Trey Gunn and Robert Fripp had been recording ProjeKct Two’s Space Groove with Adrian Belew - a double album with Ade playing drums! It was an exciting time to be a Crimson fan given the liberating and exploratory nature of the ProjeKcts venture.
The four nights at the Jazz Café provided a great opportunity for UK fans and those from further abroad to see the second ProjeKct attempting to work its way out KC’s creative stalemate.
Perhaps the most different-sounding of the ProjeKcts on account of Bill’s acoustic drums presence and jazzy inclinations, it’s Bruford who often provides the shape of many of the improvisations. 1i2 charts a shifting line between rock and jazz made all the more porous thanks to Fripp’s use of an Hammond organ-like setting and the mournful tones of Levin’s bowed bass.
As many observers commented at the time, Gunn’s contributions are revelatory. Whilst the meaning of the “Bite Me Bagel Boy” message that ran across the display screen of his rig may have caused heads to be scratched, there was nothing enigmatic or obscure about Gunn’s playing on this or any other of the nights – check out the buzz-saw solo on 1i3.
Of course it doesn’t always work. Not everything that starts off leads to a satisfactory resolution and sometimes the choices made on the fly turn out to be the wrong ones. Yet for every moment that clunks and falls to the fall unloved and unwanted, there are many more to carry the listener aloft.
