BEAT

King Crimson continued their new 80s sound begun with "Discipline". "Beat" begins with 2 excellent tracks sounding similar to "Discipline"'s sound but standing alone as amazing compositions. 'Neal And Jack And Me' immediately resonated with me, with very catchy and well executed musicanship. 'Heartbeat' is radio friendly but has such an infectious melody it always stayed with me, and is my favourite on this album. Belew's vocals are excellent and the crystal clean guitars are a stunning touch by Fripp.

The rest of the album is less memorable but follows in the same vein as the other 80s KC tracks, great playing from Fripp with his polyrhythmic technique and Bruford is always a delight on percussion. The vocals of Belew are quite haunting and are successful in conveying the powerful emotions on the songs. Levin is marvellous on bass. So overall you have accomplished musicians reinventing their own sound.

'Waiting Man' and 'Neurotica' are intriguing. In 'Neurotica' we have a manic traffic jam of many sounds, a cacohony of musical pieces merged in a collage of ideas. Belew's radio commentation is nothing short of dazzlingly insane. He commentates about the frenzy of cars backed up in the jam and spouts off surreal nonsense effortlessly. It is hilarious and a bit dark at the same time, commenting on the absurd car population explosion congesting the roads. it is one of the great experimental King Crimson tracks.

'Requiem' ends the album on an instrumental, quite ethereal in places, but it is a fairly lively album overall. So "Beat" is nowhere near as good as "Discipline" but this has some shining moments and is well worth a listen.