THRAKATTAK

Trying to sort off Crimson's short flurry of activity in the 90's, Thrak was the studio album, with Vrooom getting a preview release of the album proper. If B'Booom was the live album from that tour and that very tour can also be viewed with the Deja Vrooom or the recent releaser of Live In Japan95 or Live In Argentina 94 DVDs as well (WTF, Robert, can you be a bit constant with your titles??). This strange "beast" is a compilation of the improvs of those tours. And when one speaks of improvs, this is not at all the same kind that were present on Earthbound (Peoria, Groon) or USA (Asbury Park), or even meaner ones on the more recent The Nightwatch or Great Deceiver sets. Here most of these "tracks" are much more unstructured, chaotic, almost free-form and often present a certain "Kosmische" side like a Zeit-era Tangerine Dream or an Affenstunde-era Popol Vuh. The "double-trio formula" of the other releases of that Crimson era is not a factor here, as most of the six musos only add whatever notes they can, whenever they can, hoping for the best, but unfortunately, the best doesn't happen often or even sometimes. These near-free-form improvs are soporific at best and alienating at worst.

It was a strange bet to market it as mainstream such a weird "thing", because not only is it highly un-commercial (that's not a flaw in itself), but it is completely unstructured (or almost) and rather unrepresentative of the tours of that era (or any other Crimson era for that matter). I saw them twice in Brussels (in the spring and early summer 95), and I must say that I don't really remember whether there was that much improvisations during their shows, at least long and direction-less jams like on the present disc, but then again this album samples from concerts across the US & Japan in the fall of 95. Most likely, this crazy "thing" led to the ProjeCKts series, which are even more unstructured than this TA. For Crimson maniacs, only