CD1
1 The Devil's Triangle - King Crimson
Whilst the record buying public roundly ignored the insouciant charms of “Digging My Lawn” or “Newly-Weds” by Giles, Giles & Fripp in 1968, it was an altogether different story when our old pals from Brondesbury Road got together in 1970 in the more commodious spaces of Wessex Studios.
With the original line-up of Crimson having fallen apart in December 1969 in the USA, Fripp and Sinfield manfully soldiered on to record the follow-up album to their successful debut with the aid of Michael Giles on drums and his brother, Peter, on bass.
This is probably a listening copy ran off from the master tape at the time. It sounds like the basic rhythm track is the one used in the final album version. Some of Fripp’s Mellotron parts also made it to the final cut though further overdubbing and refinement was done at a later stage (joined also by Keith Tippett hammering away at the piano, and electric piano by Fripp).
However, these are the raw materials from which the toe-tapping classic we know and love as The Devil’s Triangle would be fashioned. So here it is – Giles, Giles and Fripp as King Crimson.
Don’t be alarmed at the gaps between 3.30 – 3.38 and again at 6.31 – 7.31 (approximately).These roughly echo the same drop-outs on Poseidon as the piece moves from the Hand of Sceiron and Garden of Worm sections respectively.
Personnel
Robert Fripp Mellotron
Micheal Giles Drums
Peter Giles Bass
2 Tune Up
3 Riff And Roll
4 Northish Star
These snippets and snatches were scooped up but then forgotten about during the making of Exposure. Though hardly earth-shattering in their content they nevertheless document the power trio that never was of John Wetton, Phil Collins and RF himself. The first finds Phil Collins keeping impeccable time in much the same way he did on Brian Eno’s Energy Fools The Magician on Brian Eno's Before & After Science. Opening up with the universally recognised Crimson distress call, the second section tantalising offers something of promise only for the stop button to cruelly cut them off in their prime. Finally, they woke up that morning and had the Exposure blues. You can see how North Star and ultimately Matte Kudasai evolved.
Personnel
Robert Fripp:guitar
Phil Collins:drums
John Wetton:bass
5 Happy Nouveau Metal
This ton of fun hails from 2002 and the sessions for the recording of The Power To Believe. Here we have the major themes from that album expertly poured into Mister Mastelotto’s blender and served up against a shuffling beatbox groove – a kind of singalongapopcrim if you will. Spool forward to several years later and Pat is on tour with the California Guitar Trio and Tony Levin, sitting in a café listening to the track that we’d sent him for verification. “Sounds super stomping to me” said Pat when he listened to it over the din of his fellow diners. We take to mean he likes it and we do too!
Personnel
Fripp
Belew
Mastelotto
Gunn
Pat’s Garage Mix
6 Guitar Drums And Flute
Taken from a time when the future of Crimson hung in the balance, Bob, Mel and new recruit, Ian Wallace, had still yet to find a bassist. Clearly, the guitar line would become the bass part to the slow sections of Sailor’s Tale. Though it would go through some major changes in the following months, this is the earliest glimpse we have of the piece and its development. As Fripp maintains the centre, his colleagues move and shift the mood around him, highlighting both Wallace’s dexterity and the exceptional fluency which Mel Collins brought to the group. If ever you wanted proof as to why Fripp was so keen to secure Mel’s place in Crimson, then even this tiny fragment should furnish you with all you need to know.
Personnel
Ian Wallace:drums
Mel Collins: flute
Robert Fripp: guitar
7 A Few Goodies There
Here’s another must-have catch fished from Mister Stormy’s poacher’s pouch. The LoG is on fine off-kilter trance-dance mode whilst Fripp offers the same kind of rip-shredding form that you hear on David Bowie’s Scary Monsters. Interestingly, the strident motif he plays sounds to these ears like a close cousin of the theme from The Sailor’s Tale. Either way this is 13 minutes of scorching stuff.
Personnel
Robert Fripp
Barry Andrews
Sara Lee
Johnny Toobad
8 Mary - Robert Fripp
A delightful find.We hear Robert, recorded at his home in Hell's Kitchen, working through some intriguing melodic possibilities for the ballad that became Mary.
Personnel
Robert Fripp
9 Fives And Sixes
10 Thank You
11 A To F Sharp Minor
During most of 1992 Robert Fripp was dividing his live work between an ongoing project with David Sylvian and Trey Gunn and the Robert Fripp String Quintet. After the RFSQ completed their live dates in Japan in November, Fripp and Gunn began work on the pre-production and rehearsals for what would become The First Day album the following month. On these snippets of level checks and rehearsals at Applehead Studios in Woodstock, New York, we hear Trey and Robert working on a couple of ideas. The first offers a different emphasis on the high cyclical motif from the track Sunday All Over The World (later recycled in The Moving Force as performed by the LoCG) whilst the second investigates the bass end of the same piece. The third and final is a romantic little beauty for sure – small but perfectly formed.
Personnel
Robert Fripp
Trey Gunn
12 Islands
Still in its early stages of development we get a chance to hear another take by Robin Miller and the uncredited string players who featured prominently on Prelude: Song Of The Gulls. Alongside Miller and crew, just beyond the studio baffles, Ian Wallace is heard beyond the studio baffles offering a drum pattern that would eventually be abandoned in favour of a far more minimal approach. Miller’s soaring melancholic tones have a forlorn beauty to them entirely in keeping with what is still on of Fripp’s most enduring and heartfelt melodies from the period.
Personnel
Robin Miller: Oboe
Ian Wallace: Drums
Uncredited string players
13 Sus Tayn Z
It does exactly what it says on the tin - sustains. Long sinous lines flowing into one another. The main difference here is that this is Fripp and Gunn exchanging those long lunar notes as mediated by Pat Mastelotto. Thus there's a radiant wash of reverb you might not otherwise get. Put together by Pat from the ProjeKct X Heaven And Earth sessions this is heavenly music from 2000.
Personnel
Robert Fripp
Trey Gunn
14 Fashionable
Although Fashionable had been kicked around during the Vrooom sessions (it appears on KCCC 8) it was deemed not to have made the grade. Down but not yet out, the piece was resurrected once the team set up camp at Real World to record Thrak. This version has some interesting shifts of emphasis from undeveloped rendition laid down earlier in May at Woodstock - notably Tony Levin’s ascending line during the intro, some sculpted fills from Trey Gunn during the middle eight sections, and of course the high-register lattice work from Fripp. Despite such additions and refinements, ultimately the track was dropped onto the cutting room floor at Real World never to see the light of day until its rescue by Mister Stormy.
Personnel
Robert Fripp Guitar
Adrian Belew Guitar
Bill Bruford Drums
Tony Levin Bass
Pat Mastelotto Drums
Trey Gunn Warr Guitar
15 Groove
Another outing for the Exposure power trio – John Wetton, Phil Collins and Robert Fripp. Sadly the instruments keep dropping out as the mute buttons on the desk are pressed to check levels. Even so, there’s some mighty fine range-finding going on here. Wetton is on superb form on this groove reminding us how talented he was at simultaneously underpinning and supporting whilst driving some of the harmonic elements of music. Over from the guitar stool we can hear the kind of cyclical riffs that would finally find their place in the League of Gentlemen and some blazing runs – including a dazzling piece of finger-on-fret fun just as the engineer blips him out to check the drums!
Personnel
Rober Fripp: guitar
John Wetton: bass
Phil Collins: drums
16 Flying Groove
Somewhere in an alternative universe (if string theory is correct), the line-up of Fripp, Collins & Wetton went on to become a world-beating jazz-rock outfit. Well, OK so that's just fanciful day-dreaming but listening to this studio outake from the Exposure sessions and you'll see that there might well be something in string theory after all.
Wetton gets the mute button treatment which allows us to hear him ripping it up, whilst Collins' playing will come as a revelation to anyone who only knows him as the glum-looking bloke with a paint-pot on his electric piano. Oh, and the guitarist here ain't too bad either.
Personnel
Robert Fripp
Phil Collins
John Wetton
17 Sound Check
Here’s a little something from a King Crimson soundcheck when the boys were playing Centrale Del Tennis in Rome. Soundchecks have a certain predictability to them as people put their gear through its paces. Sometimes though, an individual’s attention alights onto other things and the players can sometimes be glimpsed heading off down unexpected paths in these moments of preparation.
Personnel
Fripp
Belew
Mastelotto
Gunn
18 Test Loop
As the title cunningly implies this piece is taken from a test loop prior to Robert’s appearance at The Kitchen Video Arts Center in New York, February 5th 1978. The date is important, marking as it does Robert’s debut as a solo performer and the first public unveiling of Frippertronics. The opening night (of two) was subject to intense interest from the public with lines spreading around the block in freezing cold weather, requiring an impromptu second performance to try and accommodate the heavy numbers of eager punters queuing up. These loops would have been prepared by Robert as test pieces and ultimately used by him to solo over.
Personnel
Robert Fripp
19 Fracture Segment - King Crimson
Recorded on an open mic during the making of Fripp & Sylvian’s album, The First Day, we hear Robert and Trey going though Fracture. In recent years (even on the 2008 tour) Fripp was often heard playing this piece (albeit unplugged) as part of his personal preparation after sound-checking. However, hearing it in this context is interesting since Fripp had approached Sylvian to join a rekindled Krim.
As we know David declined but it’s interesting to speculate whether this old Crim fave was ever considered for the F&S setlist or even the Double Trio? Clearly Trey is feeling his way through the runs and it sounds more like Fripp and Gunn working on some aspects of technique rather than an actual take.
Of course it’s all academic now but hearing these fast runs may well put the shivers up your spine as you get lost in a what-might’ve-been style reverie!
Personnel
Robert Fripp: Guitar
Trey Gunn: Stick
CD2
1 Indoor Games - King Crimson
Here's another peek into Wessex studios as King Crimson are recording what would be their third album, Lizard, at the tail-end of 1970.
What we hear is a backing track being laid down by Gordo and Andy with a comping guide line from Robert on guitar. Mel Collins would all be brought in at a later stage to add his contributions.
Fripp too would overdub a different guitar part as well as VCS3 synth and a splash of Hammond organ. That would all come later in the process. Right now though we can cop an earful as to how vibrant the bass and drums sound on this demo whilst singing along at the same time.
Heigh-ho.
Personnel
Robert Fripp: guitar
Andy McCulloch: drums
Gordon Haskell: bass
2 Band Jam Idea
1983 was a strange year for Crimson as they attempted to work on a third album. In January they had worked in what was then Adrian Belew’s home town of Champaign-Urbana, Illinois (released as KCCC21). Then in May they arrived at Arny’s Shack in Dorset for a brief stint before going on to Marcus Studio in London. However it wasn’t until November when they arrived at Bearsville Studios in New York state that things finally came together for what would become Three Of A Perfect Pair.
The provenance of this recording was called into question as it came from an Arny’s Shack cassette but musically matches up with the bootleg Bearsville Sessions releases. In any event the sound quality presented here significantly trumps those of the boot.
Mirroring the year’s wandering around, this jam comes to no firm conclusion as Belew and Bruford swap rhythmic grooves and offsets whilst Levin and Fripp try out various ideas along the top. Still, sometimes the journey itself is more important than the actual destination.
Personnel
Robert Fripp
Adrian Belew
Tony Levin
Bill Bruford
3 Disengage
Here’s the LoG in the rehearsal trying out a track that never made it onto an official release. It’s en especially savage retake of the main riff from Disengage (a toe-tapping crowd pleaser from Fripp’s Exposure album).
Only here it’s slowed down and extremely nasty. Oh, and if that’s not enough to flabber your gast, we get a version of the descending chord sequence from Neurotica thrown in for good measure. We know from the snippets released from Exposure rehearsals that Fripp, Wetton and Collins had tossed this about a couple of years prior to LoG.
However, here the riff is reborn and tooled up with attitude. It would take another year or so before it would finally find its true home. Pop the corks and raise a glass to this little beauty.
Personnel
Robert Fripp
Barry Andrews
Sara Lee
Johnny Toobad
4 Sex Sleep Eat Drink Dream - King Crimson
It’s SingalongaThraK time thanks to Mr.Stormy’s unearthing of this pre-vocal mix of that well-known Double Trio toe-tapper. Recorded during the sessions for Thrak at Real World Studios in 1994, Mister Stormy said he particularly likes this version as all that wacky Mellotron goodness really stands out. This, by the by,is the same Mellotron that was used during the recording of In The Court of the Crimson King.
Personnel
Robert Fripp
Adrian Belew
Tony Levin
Bill Bruford
Pat Mastelotto
Trey Gunn
5 Sabre Dance
Trading under the name Radical Dance, Robert Fripp, David Singleton and Pat Mastelotto combined forces in April,1998 to work on an intriguing hybrid of soundscapes and electronica. Sadly, despite the later attentions of Pat Mastelotto and Bill Munyon (also known as BPM&M), as well as Pat and Ronan Chris Murphy, the project failed to find its legs. Although other Radical Dance tracks exist in various stages of completion only one has ever been officially released. Sabre Dance first appeared on the sampler album, Sometimes God Smiles The Young Person’s Guide To Discipline II in 1998.
Personnel
Robert Fripp
Pat Mastelotto
6 Waiting Man - King Crimson
Mister Stormy gives us an up-close earview of Bill behind his beloved Simmons kit back in 1982. Taken from the Beat sessions, the marimba sound-alike setting is given a real workout on Waiting Man. Although Bill often observed that the electric kit could be perilously temperamental, everything on this outing at least is tickety-boo.
Personnel
Bill Bruford
7 Fives
Taken from the preparations for The First Day sessions by Sylvian & Fripp, we can hear Robert and Trey tackling a composition bearing the working title of Fives. For those who like to count while they listen there’s plenty of fun to be had following the bouncing ball.
For the rest of us, we can hear both the stabbing quality of LTIA Pt.2, as well pre-echoes of the relentless downward pressure of Coda Marine 475. Add in a couple of references to Neurotica and you’ve got the makings of quite a toe-tapper.
Possibly the earliest appearance on tape of themes what would eventually become part of the Double Trio’s repertoire?
Personnel
Robert Fripp
Trey Gunn
8 Find Something Which Is Good For You
In which the League of Gentlemen try their own brand of slow music and crash slo-mo style into the theme from Peter Gunn on mogodon. Quite what dancers would have made of this smoocher we can only guess at.
What we get here is a scorching slice of anguished guitar that seems to want to tear itself out of the self-imposed lumbering tempo. Fripp’s solo recalls some of that snaking malevolence he conjured up in improvisations such as Providence from King Crimson’s Red. Unsettling and exciting all at the same time.
Interesting also to hear the thrakking slabs of organ and guitar toward the end of the piece.
Personnel
Robert Fripp
Barry Andrews
Sara Lee
Johnny Toobad
9 Bill Jeff And Robert
In his unswerving devotion to plunder the extensive DGMLive vaults, Mister Stormy has opened up a doorway onto an alternative reality! Well, not quite but hyperbole aside, if you ever wondered what the Discipline/King Crimson line-up crossed with a bit of the Bruford band might sound like, then wonder no longer.
Taken from a reel to reel recording of a rehearsal, bassist Jeff Berlin, Bill Bruford and Robert Fripp can be heard finding their way through some tricksy cross-rhythms and elusive pulses.
We're not sure where this is recorded: guesses include Bill Bruford's house and a rehearsal room in London.
However, what we are sure about is that with this tape
pre-dating the 81 line-up proper by a good couple of months, what we’ve got here the missing link between the League of Gentlemen and Discipline. Although it may be short you’d have to have cloth ears not to think “sweet!”
Personnel
Robert Fripp
Bill Bruford
Jeff Berlin
10 Non Loop Idea I
11 Non Loop Idea II
Sometimes you’ve just got to get that idea down on tape or risk it being lost. So here we have what sounds like Robert sitting down in the proximity of his trusty cassette recorder’s on-board mic and grabbing the ideas as they fly by. The two separate fragments bring to mind some of the progressions and shapes which would later be explored in more detail in the League of Crafty Guitarists. And isn’t there also the merest hint of that gradually unfolding line we hear in Easter Monday? Tiny snapshots but more than a few ideas in them.
Personnel
Robert Fripp
12 Cage Dub
Taken from Vrooom, the run-up to Thrak, we get to hear a pre-vocal version of Cage. A superb example of Adrian’s more experimental songwriting, the group were asked to play the tune “frantic” which clearly they do! Consequently there’s greater clarity between Trey Gunn’s high-register whirling and Tony Levin’s bowed Steinberger upright bass in the foreground. The announcement of the Double Trio version of Crimson brought some criticism about Adrian’s role in the band on what was then the only Crimson-related internet forum, Elephant Talk. If you’ve ever fancied yourself as being up to the job just try singing the lyrics to this little hummer in Ade’s rapid-fire delivery as heard on the finished version. Not so easy eh?
Personnel
Robert Fripp Guitar
Adrian Belew Guitar
Tony Levin Stick
Bill Bruford Drums
Pat Mastelotto Drums
Trey Gunn Warr Guitar
13 Shall We Listen To That
Bill Bruford,Jeff Berlin and Robert Fripp get their respective chops around that weird old double-helix geetar thing that had been buzzing around boppin’ Bobby’s bonce for quite a while. The musical evolution of what would become Discipline might have it’s beginnings in the League of Gentlemen but here it really starts to grow and take shape. No strangers to tricky time signatures themselves, Bruford and Berlin approach with understandable caution as they get this sucker under the fingertips. Another fascinating module for all students of the Discipline model.
Personnel
Robert Fripp
Bill Bruford
Jeff Berlin
14 Bill And Tony
15 Bill And Adrian
In the confines of London’s Odyssey Studios this particular incarnation of King Crimson begin work on their second album together. Creative juices in full flow we hear Bill and Tony trying out a sprightly run through of what would later become Waiting Man, whilst Bill and Adrian work out something altogether slower and a tad more sultry. You can almost hear where those missing interlocking notes would've fitted had it been taken further.
Personnel
Bill Bruford
Tony Levin
Adrian Belew
16 Non Loop Idea III
It’s tempting to think that the staccato attack on the strings here are in some way evocative of Fripp’s time in NYC. Certainly there’s something of the frantic pace which one encounters in the city that never sleeps, and the tune being belted out here shares the adrenalin-driven charge of You Burn Me Up I’m A Cigarette which we know was composed during Fripp’s time in the States. Clearly, it was an idea that fell by the wayside, failing to turn up in in The League of Gentlemen or King Crimson. Yet even in this very lo-fi basic rendition, there’s a freshness which suggests it would’ve been well worthy of consideration for either outfits.
Personnel
Robert Fripp
17 People Remix
Bill Bruford memorably likened the recording of Thrak as similar to entering a hard-hat area on a building site. All kinds of things were being constructed and, in the case of this particular selection from Mister Stormy, deconstructed. David Bottrill, who had played such an important part of the Vrooom / Thrak precursor, The First Day by Sylvian & Fripp, is given free reign to reimagine and reinvent the Double Trio. There’s a decidedly spooky ambience in which the track, much like an old friend, is seen at an unexpected and unconventional angle. Ultimately, the experiment was left behind once the band decamped from Real World and the album was released. Until now.
Personnel
Robert Fripp
Adrian Belew
Tony Levin
Bill Bruford
Pat Mastelotto
Trey Gunn
18 Proto Punk
There’s a number of things going on in this finger-splintering session. Dated from the Sylvian-Fripp sessions we hear snatches of ideas that would turn up in Brightness Falls, a jagged riff that sounds very similar to the Vrooom coda, and one or two descending motifs that would not eventually find a home until The ConstrucKtion of Light in 2000. Patience, it would appear, is not only a virtue but an absolute necessity when it comes to music finding its way into the world.
Personnel
Robert Fripp
Trey Gunn
