King Crimson
The Sheltering Sky

THE REVIEW

Beginning, track number six, for those who don't touch music unless it comes from vinyl, the second track on the second side.

Few, subdued chords, played so softly by Adrian Belew that they elevate Bill Bruford's slit drum, which keeps the time perfectly disciplined and regular, to the solo instrument of the intro. Then Tony Levin's Chapman stick, ethereal and intangible, part electric bass, part guitar, and part air and rhythm, opens the way for the Roland guitar-synth played by the Alien himself, Robert Fripp, who breaks the peace with trumpet-like sounds, heralding calls that immediately steer the track into a psychedelic direction that, almost at the end of the record where the same track is found, was entirely unimaginable.

But it's just a few breaths and Fripp immediately takes the track by the hand, leading it into those dreamy and sticky atmospheres, on the edge of dissonance, where he feels so at home and where the paying audience so often gets pleasantly lost, waiting to understand where the Genius intends to take them.

Naïve.

The Alien knows the direction to take, but the instructions for taking it are understood by only a few initiates, three, to be precise. And, in an album of such wide stylistic innovation, where guitar parts are often filtered, synthesized, distorted, and then spat out, the unwary listener patiently waiting for a dreamlike Fripp in crimson hues, akin to the one heard years before, must wait. Only now do we know he is still waiting.

So it is that the bald Levin organizes the interlude with arpeggiated sounds more suited to a guitar than a bass, deftly extracted from the stick which he mentored and pioneered. Seeing him play his multi-stringed instrument and hearing the notes he brings forth is an experience to be had; one wonders how many fingers a man must have to achieve so much…..

It’s Belew’s turn, not at all intimidated by the depth of the notes slipping from Fripp's cabinets, after all, isn't it the first time the Alien takes a second guitar in the band? And he chose Adrian, not a simple choice, a monstrous talent who in four years moved from Zappa's band to Bowie's "Stage" period, then to Talking Heads, already a new sensation of the wave that swerved ninety degrees towards the intuition of world music, expanding enormously, and then, last but not least, to Laurie Anderson's group, the cutting edge of minimalist experimentation for the masses, from one daring adventure to another, always towards the future.

Meanwhile, the track clarifies the intentions of the title, “The Sheltering Sky,” an expression, a simulacrum, an attempted oxymoron that one hesitates to grasp, because truly feeling safe under the sky's vault, by day or by night, seems a concept for the few. The track, says Fripp, is only partially and randomly inspired by Paul Bowles' work, which seems to echo certain languors immediately followed by fury and confusion, then again languor and torpor.

And we return to dreaming, to losing ourselves in indistinct galaxies and nebulas, to discovering new worlds, the ones within ourselves, the most complicated universes we have inside us….. always gently lying on the quiet and tribal percussive carpet of Bruford’s wooden box, precise and metronomic, a guarantee for the three travelers of the transcendent while he, keeping time, takes care of the immanent.

Until the Chief resumes the threads of the game, plays the call of the senses again like a trumpet, repeating the hieratic and calling notes with which he had started and then dispersing them, dissolving them in the liquid mists that bring calm and relax the listener's breath, in a quiet and timeless nemesis. Fripp always tends, as he has done for years and will throughout his life, to organize disorder, creating it, promoting it, nurturing it, and then integrating it into a discipline that gives it meaning, elevating it to a new Creation.

Again the liquid chords of the beginning, again the slit drum in the foreground, the man keeping time bows imperceptibly to the listener, takes two steps back, to the side, without stopping playing, melting into the shadow.