King Crimson: Red (200g, Robert Fripp remixes) [DISCIPLINE GLOBAL MOBILE]

Why you'll love it

This 200g pressing from the band's own Discipline Global Mobile label carries the 40th anniversary series mix by Steven Wilson and Robert Fripp, with etched runouts. Q later named Red one of the 50 heaviest albums of all time.

This edition

• 200g vinyl
• Steven Wilson & Robert Fripp mixes
• 40th anniversary series
• Etched runouts
• Stereo mix

About the album

It's quite something to make your heaviest record with the fewest people. By mid-1974 King Crimson was down to a trio of Robert Fripp, John Wetton and Bill Bruford, and in July and August they went into Olympic Studios in London and produced Red themselves, stacking guitar and keyboard overdubs into something dense and thunderous.

Old friends filled out the sound: former members Ian McDonald and Mel Collins on saxophones, with oboist Robin Miller and jazz trumpeter Mark Charig. The title track is a grinding instrumental riff, "Fallen Angel" and "One More Red Nightmare" show Wetton at his most powerful, and "Providence" is an improvisation cut down from a live show in Rhode Island with violinist David Cross. "Starless," written for Starless and Bible Black and polished on the road through 1974, closes the album as a slow build into a furious finale.

Many of its ideas grew out of live improvisation, and Fripp wound up that lineup just before the album came out, so Red stands as the trio's last word. As last words go, it's considerably louder than most.

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

Tracklist

Listen

On Discipline Global Mobile (cat# KCLLP7), a reissue of the 1974 album.