THREE OF A PERFECT PAIR

The third album in four years from the Tony LEVIN-Adrian BELEW-Robert FRIPP-Bill BRUFORD version of King Crimson seems to display a side of KC that is more straightforward, more poppy and less prone to dive into the complicated polyrhythmic structures and sounds of their previous two albums--and when they do they sound old, used up, retreaded. Plus I know how much stress was being placed on Bill Bruford to be reined in to straight times--or at least to provide the steady beat for the other musicians to play off of. (Thus the "click" track in "Sleepless.") Not Bill's suit. Still, the band managed to create and record one of my favorite KC songs in "Sleepless" (5:21) (10/10) (I especially love the extended EP version) and both "Larks Tongues in Aspic, Part 3" (6:01) (8/10) and the title song (4:13) (8/10) are pretty decent. "Industry" (7:05) (7/10) would have been better were it condensed into a shorter time frame or were more exciting things happening throughout its seven minutes. Again there almost seems to be a song order formula for this album as if it has to be similar to that of Discipline (and Beat). While the musicanship is still top notch, I fear that the inspiration and creativity are down--which is reflected in the performances. It is no wonder that King Crimson version three collapsed after this album.