IN THE WAKE OF POSEIDON

Not their best it feels like Crimso are treading on the same ground, the Song In the Wake of Poseiden sounds almost identical to epitaph save the chorusy part. Catfood borrows too much from the Beatles song Come Together on Abbey Road, but Keith Tippets chaotic piano is intriging and used to great use on King Crimson's following album Lizard. The Devils triangle originally impressed me but I later found out it was a cover of Holst's Mars, still enjoyable but really is their any original material on this album? Well perhaps Candence and Cascade, not a bad mellow track but not a classic.

I do like Pictures of a city, but the instrumental and basic structure of this song borrows too much from 21st Century Schzoid Man.

But I will say this in the albums favor, there are better textures used in this album I like the added jazz elements as well as the brief piece a beginning and them the agressive trumpets at the beginning of Pictures, I also like the chaos music at the end of the Devils Triangle which influenced Van Derr Graff Generators music on H to He and Pawn Hearts. I've read somewhere that it was Robert Fripp's interntion to consolidate their previous album's sound (In the Court of the Crimson King) while hint at the next album (Lizard) . If this is what Fripp's vision of this album is he has succeeded, perhaps it was all preparation because Lizard is a massive leap in terms of sound for Crimson.

So this album gets three stars, not unlistenable and an evolution in terms of sounds and textures, but not essential for the reasons above.