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[Live & On Record]

KING CRIMSON
OUT OF BALANCE

Word was that King Crimson were playing heavier than ever after their series of fall concerts opening for Tool on the West Coast. That’s not true. Although the venerable band’s performance at the Orpheum last Saturday leapt to heights of virtuosity, pastel soundscapes edged out powerful riffs and solos, and fractured rhythms anchoring deft improvisations were a steamrolling contrast to the dynamics and diversity of past performances.

This was not a bad concert, by any stretch. Although Pat Mastelotto remains a less inventive drummer than long-time King Crimson sticks hero Bill Bruford, band founder Robert Fripp and Adrian Belew are still the world’s most daring guitar tag team. On stage Belew laid Jackson Pollock splatters of sound and sonorous melodies over Fripp’s furiously dense single-note rhythm patterns, which occasionally came to thunderheads of soloing. And Trey Gunn proved a touch-guitar virtuoso who covers the bass-to-high range faultlessly, even if his instrument loses a level of emotional expression because of its inability to bend notes like a conventional guitar or bass.

The problem is that King Crimson’s current live identity is that of a primarily instrumental outfit. In the past, the mix of purely instrumental numbers and songs was more evenly split. The verse-chorus-bridge structures of Crimson’s formal songs seem to spark more ideas in their improvisations, giving the group something richer than heads to draw upon for melodic inspiration and encouraging wider dynamics. Belew’s high and lovely voice is also a welcome presence, giving uplift or earthy grounding to King Crimson’s sonic architecture. At the Orpheum, its diminished role kept the group from tapping all their strengths.

For evidence of King Crimson in balance, consult Vroom Vroom (Discipline Global Mobile), a just-released live double CD that captures the band as a sextet (with Bruford and bass/Chapman-stick ace Tony Levin) in 1996. The mix of songs and improvisations is spot-on, the playing full of colorful divergence.

Nonetheless, the new "Electric" put the accent on interplay and intricacy. Sustained Eastern-influenced lines and melodies that wove a dense Mars-scape of sounds were passed from player to player as they improvised on one another’s themes. Mastelotto’s increased use of rhythm loops and electronic textures also enhanced King Crimson’s sonic palette.

Opener John Paul Jones’s set was a reminder of just who played many of the thrilling slide-guitar lines on Led Zeppelin’s albums. His new material, from a CD slated for February release, had its charms; even a solo number about a married couple’s plans for a romantic getaway that he performed in his clipped British accent with just a ukulele won points for personality. Jones not only maintained his reputation as one of rock’s greatest bassists, fronting a trim trio, but took joy in turning his electric mandolin into a monster, running it through a Marshall stack and delivering a jolting instrumental with the headlong charge of his old guitar comrade Jimmy Page in top form. Yet the most exuberant performances, and crowd reactions, came with the old Zeppelin tunes. Jones’s zingy steel-guitar instrumental versions of "When the Levee Breaks" and "Black Dog" (on which he used his pick and slide to leap gracefully among vocal melody, rhythm chords, and solo breaks) reached back to the instrument’s ’50s glory days while maintaining the edge — and thrill — of contemporary improvisation.

BY TED DROZDOWSKI

Issue Date: December 13 - 20, 2001

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