King Crimson - 1972-12-08 Newcastle, UK (2019)

This previously unknown soundboard tape was discovered by ex-KC crew member Chris Kettle and passed on to DGM in 2017. The mad, savage beauty and heroic sense of adventure that made this period so magical is caught on the fly in wonderful up-close and pristine detail by Chris Kettle on this soundboard cassette. The improv that follows on from Daily Games (or Book Of Saturday as it would later be titled) moves into something that could pass for a West Coast-like ‘peaceful vibe.’ With a laid back groove from Bruford, burbling percussion from Muir and a meandering almost mellow solo by Fripp with yearning annotation from Cross on violin.

When Fripp comes in with his laser-beam sustain as the pace hots up, Bruford can be heard yelling his approval. As the velocity increases there’s a line from Fripp that could easily be mistaken for the opening of Fracture suggesting that this future-classic was spiralling around him even at this early stage.

Bruford can be heard yelling more as the tension and grooves build between Wetton’s percolating bass and his drumming. The blow prior to a beautiful reading of Exiles is brimming with invention and a level of collective attention that is especially impressive.

The brutal stop of Easy Money gives way to an amorphous improvisation that centres on a lot of percussion and allsorts with some Fripp-powered Mellotronic surges and swoops which ultimately herald the way out of the nightmare/frightmare zone and out towards The Talking Drum and the climax of the main set, LTIA Pt II.

Though the visual element of Jamie Muir’s contribution is lost in all of this, his presence as a kind of agent provocateur within the music comes over loud and clear throughout. Tragically as Muir flails chains on his sheet metal toward the climax of the last verse of LTIA PT II the tape runs out and this hitherto unheard gem from KC ’72 comes to an abrupt end. Regardless of missing the 21st Century Schizoid Man encore, this is a superb-sounding recording of this incarnation in full-flight.

Robert Fripp - Guitar, Mellotron
John Wetton - Bass, Vocals
David Cross - Violin, Mellotron, Keyboards
Bill Bruford - Acoustic Drums And Percussion
Jamie Muir - Acoustic Drum, Percussion, Allsorts