RED

Red is King Crimson´s seventh album and the last one of the second era in their discography. The band is cut down to a trio of Robert Fripp, John Wetton and Bill Bruford but with the assistance of Mark Charig, Mel collins, David Cross, Ian McDonald and Robin Miller on winds and strings. This might be my favorite King Crimson album. I have made some harsh reviews of Larks´ Tongues in Aspic and particularly of Starless and Bible Black as I felt there were way too much instrumental avant garde noodling instead of structured songs and with Red it seems like King Crimson have listened to my criticism ( for the most part anyway).

The album consists of five songs and three of them are nearly masterpieces, one is very good and one is unfortunately useless to me.

Red, One More Red Nightmare and Starless are some of the best songs in King Crimson´s discography and well worth your money. Fallen Angel is a pretty good song too while I can´t stand Providence that sounds like the jam like songs on Starless and Bible Black. I´m sorry but to me it´s a waste of 8 precious minutes of my life.

The musicianship is astonishing on Red. It´s like they knew this would be their last album together, because every last juice is pressed out of those instruments. They play like their lives depended on it. It´s so enjoyable to be witness to. This is one of the best perfomances on any prog rock album I have heard so far.

The production is really impressive too. It´s clearly the best production on any King Crimson album up until then. It´s dark but still every instrument is clearly heard in the mix. Even John Wetton´s voice is better than on most of the albums he appears on and that´s a positive thing coming from my mouth as I´m not a big John Wetton fan. I´m of course only talking about his vocals here as his bass playing is of high quality.

This is a very good album even though it has flaws like Providence. It deserves 4 stars in my book. It´s no doubt one of the most groundbreaking prog rock releases ever and highly recommedable even though I wouldn´t call it a masterpiece.