At the end of a 40-date stint over two months the Crims arrive in Toronto for the last of their live appearances of 2000. Though clearly tired and probably looking forward to a well-earned rest, opening with LTIA pt IV ensures that the team hit the ground running. Despite the “shock and awe” nature of the piece, which includes a non-instrumental coda, there’s a sense of playfulness that carries over into a fleet-fingered TCOL. Listen out for a brief unscheduled improv between the ending of Frying Pan and Fractured. Beginning with the mournful string sequence from Seizure, things are quickly vectored off into impressionistic daubs and strange sonic events. Less than two minutes in length it’s a nice, if slightly abstract, bonus to have.
When Fripp starts playing the moto perpetuo motif that signals the beginning of Fractured the gimlet-eyed focus snaps back with a vengeance and the band execute a blistering series of twist and turns that would give most folks a case of the screaming habdabs. Gunn’s baritone settings are well to the fore on this soundboard enabling the listener to follow in close-up detail the light and shade which the Warr guitarist brings to this extraordinary piece.
The improv proper occupies a belligerent mood with Fripp’s scrabbling sorties across the fretboard flying fast and loose across the pounding deliberation of the rhythm section invoking the kind of playing more usually associated with the ProjeKcts. Damned by the faint praise of the Toronto Globe And Mail whose correspondent noted “It's a highly accomplished outfit, but one that seems to perform more for its own enjoyment than that of the audience” and that the band “managed to push the envelope too far, delving into pointless instrumental Sturm und Drang on numbers such as Lark's Tongues in Aspic Part IV and [TCOL’s] title cut.”
Four days later Fripp would begin a series of three soundscape concerts in the Winter Garden of New York's World Financial Centre
