ISLANDS

The fourth King Crimson studio album was released in 1971 and is the last of the first (and earliest) distinct period for the band - 'Islands' is the art-rock-meets-improvisation with a jazzy swagger album that has polarized progressive rock fans for decades. This is the last album to feature lyricist Peter Sinfield as well as the only album to feature the line-up of Robert Fripp, Mel Collins, Boz Burrell and Ian Wallace. 'Islands' sees the band trying not to identify itself with any well-defined musical niche but also still searching for that recognizable identity following the release of the avant-garde 'Lizard' and the slightly derivative 'In the Wake of Poseidon'. In this sense, this album might be considered transitional, still romantically informed and intuited by classical music yet looking forward to and anticipating an exploration of music in free form, freed from the conventional notions of rock music and its tropes and structures.

With just six songs on the tracklist, 'Islands' remains as dense and exploratory as all preceding King Crimson albums, with Fripp directing an often disjointed but charming and melancholic version of the band, capturing that early 70s ingenuity that we often wind in the more eclectic corners of the genre. We have the floating sax on 'Formentera Lady', the 10-minute opener, counterbalancing the jazz-driven guitars, a gently avant-garde composition, somehow restrained but in a very intelligent way. 'Sailor's Tale' is a threatening instrumental prone to an early-Crimson emanation, with its swift jazz versing and generally solid improvisation, often criticized without proper justification as aimless. Fripp sounds fractured but quite confident here. 'The Letters' is the final track on Side A - distinctly Crimson in its bleak poetry. 'Ladies of the Road' is equal amounts cynical, sexist and ironic and might as well be the odd one out, with Collins impressing, nevertheless. The classical influences of the band are celebrated on 'Song of the Gulls', while the title track is a dreamy, melancholic piece that could be seen as the compositional precursor to post-rock, with its ambient, gradual unfolding. This entire album is quite important, and unfortunately very underrated, too - one of the peculiar but daring parts of the King Crimson discography.

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