THE CONSTRUKCTION OF LIGHT

This album, to me, is the most inexplicably hated album king crimson put out. What is wrong with this album? How can people give this album less then 4 stars? To me, this is one of my all-time favorite king crimson albums, and this bias against it fascinates me. It's like they had a country or rap breakdown in the middle or something (2 genres that proggers have a bias against as well).

This album features an impressive array of electronic effects, mostly improvised on guitar, I might add. It is intended to be atmospheric. There is the whole polyrhythmic interlocking thing going on here throughout. The instruments all wonder around, playing with larger interviews then normal, giving the music a feel like it is from outer space (not space rock). However, they all go together, all the tones fit into the larger picture, they all fit the scales and what not. Overall, this album is a mostly instrumental groove very similar to projekt 2's space groove, but less improvised and better written.

The album starts off with a comedy blues song called prozak blues. It isn't terribly funny after a few times through, but I still enjoy it. The guitar lines, the groove, and the solos are excellent. The following 2 tracks are one of king crimson's finest moments, The construktion of light. It begins with a very ethereal guitar duet where robert plays one note, and then adrian plays a note, and they trade all these notes off at a relatively fast clip without ever messing up. This is a very hard thing to do, as should be apparent to any musician. The drums are very unique on this song too. Part two is a more conventional song, with a relatively normal guitar part and groove with the drums, featuring some stream of consciousness words with regular verses. Into the frying pan is a sort of alternative rocker, with very awesome drumming, breaking out into an instrumental section, and tension building verse, returning back to chorus, and then breaking out into more mayhem, including some very odd solos, which are purposefully unfocused. It also features lots of breaks, and strange sound effects. Overall, the effect is similar to being in a frying pan actually, maybe finding a piece of toast to stand on in the middle of the song, maybe going to heaven at the end of the song (soundscapes). Fraktured follows, and boy oh boy, is it good. This version involves the full band a bit more then the original, and is very different to the original, although still featuring that famous guitar line. The breaks out into dual guitar melody are great. It picks up throughout the album, going through cycles of crazy guitar line, nice dual guitar melody, crazier guitar line, nice dual guitar melody. Once again, the drums are awesome. This album should ease the fears of former mastelotto doubters. Near the end, this song is absolutly insane, and very fun to gape at. It is a rapid fire, synth driven, tech workout which is desperate sounding in it's frantic clawing away at notes. The bass actually keeps up with the guitar on this one, hats off to the bassist. The world's my oyster soup kitchen floor wax museum is a fun lyrical experiment with a great solo section featuring guitars that sound like pianos, among other fun things. It is a lighthearted prelude to the very heavy hitting larks tongues in aspic IV. It is basically a really long guitar spotlight with a rhythem of the original part II (and the part III). People angrily proclaim that they don't want so many remakes of this song, but I don't see why not. It is a good remake, is it not? Seriously, king crimson have been retouching their old material for quite some time now, and usually rewriting it in very unique ways. Get used to it. This song is great, if only you can see past the superficial similarities to te other LTIA releases. THe coda is very touching. Following it, there is a bonus track. It is a preview of projekt X, and is a wonderful sort of new age improvised world electronica/rock thingimajig, and I really enjoed it. It really is a relaxing mood lifter to end the album on a positive note.

I couldn't find flaw with this album, but it isn't an essential masterpiece either, so I give it 4.5 stars.