ELEKTRIK

I'm not particulary atracted of this "american" incarnation of King Crimson. But this album shows us two aspects: first KC is a live band, their best is live and the energy they have live rarely was reflected in the studio albums. Second is that the new material, and previous material fro TCOL are coherent, and can fit on the same set. Better would be to say that the best would be to keep THIS album and discard the studio versions!

From this point of seeing I reccomed this album to anyone that wish a different approach to the actual line up of the King Crimson. It is a fluent album, played well and a good recording. It as less electronic drumming, more balanced sounds. It doesn't makes replicas of the Double Trio songs (apart of One time) which friendly they don't convinced in the quartet form (listen to Heavy Construkction and compare to B Boom). In other words the actual KC is playing what has created. This honesty fills this performance, which you can appreciate even better in Eyes wide open DVD. The missing song is...eyes wide open, which I would highly appreciated. Nevertheless if you want to begin listening the King Crimson of the period 2000-2003 you can do it from here...

If your a fan of "The Power To Believe" record you have to get this live recording. This was recorded when they toured Japan in 2003 and most of the songs are from that record with three songs from "The ConstruKction Of Light" and one from "Thrak". Almost 75 minutes of fantastic music and most of it is incredibly heavy.

It doesn't start off that way though with the "Introductory Soundscape" that has over 5 minutes of spacey music. After 4 minutes the crowd breaks out in applause, I believe they were moved as I was by the pure emotion that is delivered through those beautiful sounds. "The Power To Believe 1: (A Cappella)" is Adrian singing alone in this short intro tune. "Level Five" is a heavy duty song with some amazing guitar and percussion.The guitar is screaming after 5 minutes. "Prozakc Blues" from "The ConstruKction Of Light" is a humerous song with Adrian singing in a deep voice. More heaviness on this one as well. "EleKtriK" features some intricate and complex guitar and percussion that gets heavy 6 minutes in. "Happy With What You Have To Be Happy With" opens heavily with some incredible guitar 2 minutes in.

"One Time" is almost a refreshing break as this laid back song from the "Thrak" album is so smooth, warm and uplifting. "Facts Of Life" just smokes, it's so heavy ! "The Power To Believe II (Power Circle)" is kind of cool as the band brings in some Eastern sounds (hey, it's in Japan). There is a lot of atmosphere and spacey sounds that again are so moving. "Dangerous Curves" slowly builds to a hypnotic rhythm.This is a powerful song ! "Larks' Tongues In Aspic IV" and the final song "The World's My Oyster Soup Kitchen Floor Wax Museum" are both from "The ConstruKction Of Light" album. The first one is all about Fripp and the boys just flat out playing one of my favourite instrumentals from them,while the second concentrates more on the lyrics and Belew.

If you can find this cd I would get it because this album shows latter day CRIMSON at their best.

With Robert Fripp's reluctance to look backwards, a King Crimson concert from the new millenium will usually consist primarily of songs from the latest album. So on this album, recorded in 2003, we get mostly songs from The Power To Believe.

The album starts out slowly. At least they had the good sense to limit the Introductory Soundscape to five minutes, but it feels much longer. And The Power To Believe I comes off as Adrian Belew showing off a synthesizer effect.

The album hits it's stride with Level Five, and pretty much stays up through the end, with a slight dip at Happy With What You Have To Be Happy With (nowhere near as powerful as the studio version) and One Time (one of those Belew ballads). But the album ends on a high note, with a great spacy jam on The Power To Believe II through the closer, a raucous version of The World's My Oyster Soup Kitchen Floor Wax Museum.

Too good to be rated 3 stars, but not quite a 4 star album, I'll rate this 3.5 stars, rounded up.

In all the abundance of King Crimson live releases, this one is a must for fans of modern Crimson. The band delivers almost the entire Power to Believe album and the best tracks from The ContruKction of Light with a steaming intensity.

After the lush emotive Introductory Soundscape, Level Five strikes with a devastating blow. This is where Crimson teaches all metal bands a lesson in crushing heaviness. Belew's guitar is screaming on top of the heavy chromatic riffs from Fripp. Belew truly surprises with his raw vocal performance on ProzaKc Blues. I can understand most people fall for the choir-boy charm of Greg Lake, but Belew has proven to be a much more versatile and dependable vocalist.

Most tracks from Power to Believe can hardly be told apart from their studio originals. One Time from Thrak offers a slightly changed interpretation with delicate frippertronic soundscapes from Fripp. The concert closes with the two best tracks from the ContruKction of Light, making that album even less necessary for me.

An excellent concert but as usual with live albums, I feel a bit disappointed that most track stick too close to the originals. I find the DVD version of this concert (Eyes Wide Open), with its extra tracks and concert footage to be much livelier and generally the preferred live experience from this incarnation of Crimson.

This is a 1-CD edit of the first disc of a two-DVD concert set called Eyes Wide Open. The first disc of the DVD presents a concert the band did in Japan on the Power to Believe tour (the second disc of the DVD depicts a show from the ConstruKction of Light tour, and has the neat feature of choosing from a set of improvs at random when you watch it), and it shows the band as an impressive monster. It contains performances from all of Power except for "Eyes Wide Open" and the last two versions of the title track, and it's pretty amazing to observe the skill and creativity required to bring that material to life on stage. The band naturally sticks with material recorded by that quartet; the oldest the band chooses to go is "One Time," and the rest of the show is filled out with three ConstruKction numbers ("ProzaKc Blues," Larks 4" and the title track, not found on the CD) and "The Deception of the Thrush" (also not found on the CD). On the whole, I'd have to recommend that any fan of this era of the band watch that DVD at least once.

So why not a higher grade for the album? Because there's nothing at all revelatory about it, that's why. What made me enjoy Heavy ConstruKction so much was that (a) the ConstruKction of Light material sounded so much better on stage than on the album, and (b) the improvs managed to entertain me so much despite the fact that I don't especially care for purely improvised music (and definitely not through most of King Crimson's history). The Power to Believe material sounds terrific, but it already sounded terrific (and it sounds pretty much identical to the studio versions), and all of the other material (apart from Fripp's opening soundscape, which I quite enjoy as a walk-on introduction) could be found in equally entertaining form on Heavy ConstruKction. I really wish, with this album, they'd just bitten the bullet and made it a double, if only to include "The Deception of the Thrush," which was the one chance for the band to vary its performances on this tour. As is, well, I'd almost have to say that the band's immaculate technical skills work against them on this album; some clear struggle to replicate the material would have provided some needed variation.

Basically, this is another good example of my general adage that great live shows don't necessarily make great live albums. Look for it if you're curious, but again, I'd rather recommend the DVD.

A live album capturing a Japanese date on the Power to Believe tour. It's a very modern King Crimson set, focused mostly on live material from The Power To Believe and The ConstruKction of Light - the oldest song here is One Time, from THRAK. Whilst the studio version of The ConstruKction of Light may be one of Crimson's weakest studio releases (though the recent ReconstruKction of Light do-over has been a major improvement), the songs here from it shine, having benefitted from being refined through live performance for years, and the setlist overall is about as good a live album from 2003 King Crimson as I'd expect.

Is it absolutely world-changing in the way Crimson's pre-1990s work was? No, but a band can only be expected to rewrite the rules of rock music so often in their lifetimes. If you thought The Power To Believe was a decent studio release, you'll probably find a lot to enjoy here.