King Crimson

A scant forty minutes to demolish decades' worth of future clichés about progressive rock. That's what "Red" is, first and foremost: the summation of an entire era now at its twilight, but also an essential handbook for the rock of the future. The fertile hybrid that in one stroke ridicules every bit of nonsense about the supposed artificiality of prog as opposed to the genuine grit of "street-level" rock'n'roll. No self-indulgence, no mustiness, no cobwebs, then: "Red" is modern, abrasive rock, in which even the symphonic flourishes become a searing deflagration.

As if it already sensed it had to make way for a new generation of musicians – it's 1974, and the punk-wave revolution is right around the corner – the Crimson King lets out his cry, even more terrifying than that of the schizoid man on the debut. A swan song, perhaps, but also a lesson for those who would follow. You may or may not like Nirvana, but Kurt Cobain's proclamation of it as the "greatest album of all time" reads, for "Red", like a seal of immortality.

The magic quartet of Robert Fripp, John Wetton, Bill Bruford and David Cross reaches its final chapter here. In truth, though, it's already effectively a trio, with Cross appearing only as a session man, alongside former Crimson men Ian McDonald, Mel Collins, Robin Miller and Marc Charig.

As "monolithic" as the legendary debut, "Red" in fact crowns a revolution already foretold by the albums that preceded it. "Lark's Tongues In Aspic" (1973) and "Starless And Bible Black" (1974) had already signalled Fripp's determination to dismantle the dogmas of prog, pursuing an increasingly angular and obsessive guitar style that would later become the subject of obsessive dissection throughout the '80s.

Without losing the romantic, solemn spirit that had built the fortunes of the early King Crimson, the supreme leader carries out yet another rebirth, inventing a kind of heavy-prog that – at the risk of sounding like an oxymoron – could be called lean, so sharp and jagged is it. Fripp confirms himself as a two-faced genius: on one hand the erudite avant-gardist pursuing an "artistic" vision, on the other the rock musician who knows exactly how to hit the listener in the gut. So the tools of the prog trade – violin, keyboards, oboe, mellotron – coexist with the guitar onslaughts of an ensemble that had never sounded so aggressive, on an album that plays out like a dark liturgy, with its unsettling symbolism ("red nightmare", "fallen angel", "bible black"...).

The opening title track, an instrumental suite in the vein of "Larks' Tongues In Aspic Part II", is immediately a showcase for this whirling, energy-overloaded sound. The only track performed by the trio alone, it unwinds through guitar distortion and progressions, propelled by a furious rhythm section: pure prog-metal ante litteram. The other full-throttle track is "One More Red Nightmare": the riff from "Red" returns, slightly varied and wrapped in dark spirals, where Fripp's guitar repeatedly crosses paths with McDonald's and Collins's saxophones; but the true star is Bruford, a veritable octopus behind the drums with his hair-raising fills. The sound turns harder still, verging on noise, in the other instrumental fever-dream "Providence", where the band launches into a free-form improvisation: the dialogue between Cross's violin and Wetton's power-chord bass lays the groundwork for another downpour of Fripp's dissonances, while Bruford ventures into tortuous shifts of pattern.

The Crimson King's romantic soul is mirrored in the jazz-rock ballad "Fallen Angel", sung by Wetton in his characteristically warm, soft register: Fripp's acoustic guitar and Robin Miller's oboe conjure a melody that soon takes on psychedelic hues in the refrain, amid bursts of sax and electric guitar and Charig's horn incursions.

But it's merely a foretaste of the closing apotheosis of "Starless", the album's masterpiece and the definitive suite of all prog-rock: twelve white-hot minutes, oscillating between cosmic calm and paroxysmal tension, in a spectacular alternation of instrumental passages and jarring shifts of rhythm. It opens with the ancient enchantment of strings and mellotron, Fripp's evocative phrase and Wetton's bitter lament sketching out the stunning melody, punctuated by Collins's sax; then comes the bridge's pause, swelling with tension as Fripp's Gibson reiterates a minimal chord and pushes the suspense to breaking point, climbing ever more dizzyingly in pitch, until the explosive crescendo, in which the whole band takes part, and the return of the mellotron's opening motif, this time carried by the sax, with Wetton's bass slashing away in the background.

The sky is starless, the angels are falling, and the King is about to take his leave of the court. Perhaps that's why Fripp and company appear on an album cover for the first (and last) time: three gaunt faces carved out of a stark black backdrop. The testament of the prog era? Perhaps. More likely, it's its definitive crossing into a new age. By the time "Red" hits the shops, the band will have already disbanded; it will re-form in the '80s, in a radically renewed lineup, under the command of its enlightened despot, Robert Fripp, by then perfectly at home in the new music scene, indeed almost a guiding spirit of the wave generation, thanks to his oblique experimentation. But that, as they say, is another story.

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31/10/2006