LARKS' TONGUES IN ASPIC

Perhaps you'd bought the first four or five albums. 'In the Court of the Crimson King': a bleak, clinical classic, steadfastly against the grain of peace of love that met its final death at Altamont. 'In Wake of Poseidon': more of the same pomposity but still better than most. 'Lizard': a very prog offering indeed, pastoral and jazzy by turns. 'Islands': a generally more traditional offering. And then what?

And then what...

One thing Robert Fripp has never been afraid of is ripping everything up and starting again and, boy, is 'Larks Tongues' the fruit of that. First, a bit of a clear out: get rid of the sax player and replace him with a violinist; get rid of the rockist Boz Burrell and replace him with the softer (and more technically accomplished) John Wetton; get rid of a competent but by no means exceptional drummer and replace him with the more-than-a-little cerebral Bill Bruford then pair him with Jamie Muir, someone on the verge of insanity. Then there was Robert himself. There had been vague clues to a more, shall we say, detached approach on earlier releases (notably his 'solo' on 'Sailors Tale') but nothing could have prepared anyone for what he pulls out of the hat here. Tracks 2 and 3 aside, the guitar is a bizarre mix of: a) very heavy riffing b) hyper-fast runs that sound like the solutions to differential equations and c) not playing at all. Cap that with a more minimal and inscrutable sleeve than seemed permissable at the time. In hindsight, it is the final track that predicts a great deal of Crimson's future but it is perhaps Jamie Muir's contributions that render 'Larks Tongues' such a glorious oddball, propelling an already strange album into the stratosphere. From the Coda to 'Larks Tongues Part One', to 'Talking Drum', to the exceptional slow section in the middle of 'Easy Money' to all the weird percussive eruptions throughout. It is clear that something genuinely transformational had happened in the few glorious months that this line-up were together and remains a tragedy that it did not last.

Nevertheless, it still stands out as a true left-of-field wonder, worlds away from the other prog acts that Crimson are so often bracketed with.

Collective genius.

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