THREE OF A PERFECT PAIR

Whilst I do agree that Three of a Perfect Pair does not meet the high standards of Discipline - and it's certainly not as easy to like as the accessible Beat - I also think it's been rather underrated over the years. The plan of arranging the album to include all the avant-garde material on one side and all the accessible stuff at the front of the album sounds good in theory, but in practice it means that the album doesn't flow at all well; the improvisations on the second side may be a little overlong, but listened to in isolation they aren't so bad; what really makes the second side drag is the fact that there's one dense Frippian soundscape after the next without any rhythmic New Wave rave-ups to split them up.

But the songs on the first side are all wonderful - I particularly like Sleepless, which has an absolutely killer bassline from Tony Levin - and I think if you listen to the album in a different order, shuffling the accessible and experimental pieces together, you can get a much more satisfying listen. So, a decent piece altogether, hampered a little by misguided decisions about the running order.