King Crimson: Larks' Tongues In Aspic (2LP, 50th anniversary edition, complete, 2023 mixes) [PANEGYRIC]

Why you'll love it

This 50th anniversary 2LP set pairs a new Steven Wilson mix of the whole album with four Elemental mixes, designed to feel like sitting in the studio with the players around you. It comes in a wide-spined gatefold jacket with printed inner sleeves, made in England.

This edition

• 2LP set
• 50th anniversary edition
• 2023 Steven Wilson stereo mix
• Four Elemental mixes on LP2
• Wide-spined gatefold jacket
• Printed inner sleeves
• Pressed in England

About the album

In 1972 Robert Fripp tore it up and started again. In came John Wetton on bass and vocals, Bill Bruford from Yes on drums, David Cross on violin and keyboards, and Jamie Muir, a free-improvising percussionist who played a conventional kit when he felt like it and a whole table of small percussion when he didn't. Muir in particular gave the band a wild, unpredictable edge, and the five of them developed this music on stage before taking it into the studio.

Fripp was writing starker music, drawing on Béla Bartók, Igor Stravinsky, Jimi Hendrix and free improvisation, and you hear it in the two halves of the title piece, where violin and clattering percussion lurch into heavy riffing. "Book of Saturday" and "Exiles" are gentle and melancholy, "Easy Money" has Wetton's swagger, and "The Talking Drum" builds slowly and patiently into the ferocity of "Larks' Tongues in Aspic, Part Two."

It's a key album in the band's evolution, and the template for the heavier Crimson of the 70s. Bruford left one of the biggest bands in prog to join this one, which by the standards of the genre counts as a very bold career move.

Also at Kops: more King Crimson on vinyl · browse Rock

Tracklist

Listen

On Discipline Global Mobile / Panegyric (cat# KCLPX2023), a reissue of the 1973 album.