LIZARD

My favourite King Crimson album. Perfect, creative surreal and exciting. Peter Seinfield's lyrics are very symbolic and imaginative. When I went to high school and took the art course, many of my paintings were influenced by this masterpiece, due to the clever lyrics and amazing myusic. The track Circus starts the album quietly and mysteriously with Haskell telling a mysterious story which according to the notes in the CD package is about loss of innocence. The trumpets adds a circusy but also sinister sound with the right balance of chaos and melody. Fripps guitar is in the background creating excellent melodies.

Indoor Games is in my opinion the best song on the album and one of my personal favourites, the keyboards are surreal and the trumpets rhythms are great a fantastic imaginative piece with a great instrumental which feel so imaginative I feel when I am listening to this that I am in a strange comic land with bizarre creatures. It is a very warm feeling piece in comparison to the ending of the epic Lizard.

Happy Family is a mad chaotic piece with the contribution of Keith Tippet's crazy piano. The lyrics sound insane but are infact symbolic about the break up of the Beatles. Lady of the Dancing Water is a nice Beatle influenced little ballad that finishes the first part of the album.

Lizard is the twenty minute epic, starting with Jon Anderson singing on the first part Prince Rupert Awakes, a fantastic meloncholic piece, beautiful especially at its ending it is klike the beginning of a dream that is the epic Lizard. The next part, Bolereo -the Peacocks Tale is kind of a fusion of classical music and Jazz, influenced by Miles Davis's Sketches of Spain (also a fusion of classical music and Jazz), it is very soothing and dreamlike the kind of music you could gently go to sleep with, but yet colourful with strange characters in the sounds crezated by the music. That piece reaches a climax and then goes into The Battle of Glass Tears; the first part of it; Dawn Song is a meloncholic piece sung by Gordon Haskell, about the preparation of war for the next movement, Last Skirmish is with the aid of trumpets and Saxaphone both dark, meloncholic and chaotic which is after all what war is with a sense of impending doom, which takes us into Prince Ruperts Lament, led by Robert Fripps guitar, it really captures the despairing aftermath of a battle,a sense of solitude the feeling that noone is left alive, and that it is going to rain soon. The epic ends with Big Top rather ironic after the dread that this is a happy sounding piece, but it soon starts to soung menacing (as one reviewer put in the CD notes), and spirals away, after hearing this you're left feeling a little cold after an engrossong epic. To me this is because Robert Fripp has really captured the emotion of battle, after that you might want to play Indoor Games again to cheer you up. What amases me is that Robert Fripp wrote all the songs on this album they have so much depth.

The artwork sleeve album matches the mood of the album perfectly, delighting the imagination. Each little picture has a link with a certain event in each song.

This album is light years ahead of their previous albums, And has a lot more depth than other prog albums released that year perhaps with the exceptuion of Genesis Trespass, to me this show that King Crimson was always one step ahead of every other band.

An excellent innovative essential masterpiece. My favourite King Crimson album.