LARKS' TONGUES IN ASPIC

This was my first exposure to KC and is still my favourite. I love it for the iconic sun motif cover (or whatever the hell it is), the exquisite 30th anniversary re-master that helps draw attention to the light and shade between the acerbic bookends; Larks Tongues I and II.

Robert Fripp, ever the iconoclast had attracted a bohemian group of musicians to craft an album so of its time, yet jarringly timeless. As nonsensical as that sounds, the 70s were pretty grey in the UK, yet LTIA evokes a wistful nostalgia for an idyllic pastoral world that for most of us, didn't actually exist.

I'm drawn to John Wetton's lovely fat bass, Fripp's discordant lines and Bill Bruford's knack for subtlety, but the real emotional focus on this album is David Cross's violin, at times melancholic often vitriolic. And let's not forget Jamie Muir who colours the album in such a way as to make one wonder if his inclusion could have made "Red" even better??

I've got no problem with Wetton's vocals, I enjoy the relative calm of Book of Saturday after Larks 1, while Exiles is a haunting landscape preceding the more upbeat and groove laden Easy Money. The percussion and violin at the beginning of Talking Drum stirs more rose-tinted memories of the 70s, although this time with a trippy eastern flavour, building to a wonderful crescendo, but as magnificent and varied as all these tracks are, they are merely the starter.

Larks 2 is a lesson in controlled tension, we wait until the violins and percussion are released like bottled lightning and finally the guitar is unleashed with discordant and uncontrolled fury.

This is an album of widely different songs that just happens to hang together perfectly. If, like me you're looking to try out King Crimson, I can't think of a better place to start.