King Crimson
THRaKaTTaK

After the release of the horrendous 'Thrak', King Crimson (or rather, Fripp) in 1996 decide it's time to unleash a new live album. Maybe they want to redeem themselves from the last disappointing live effort, perhaps they want to prove that technically, unlike compositionally, they are still surprisingly advanced. Or maybe they just want to get on stage and create a big racket. And this last hypothesis seems to be the closest to the truth.

'THRaKaTTaK' is a non-album, where experimentation overwhelms everything, even the normal concept of a song. A track-by-track analysis? Out of the question, it's impossible! Indeed, I urge everyone to give this album a rating of 1, I gave it a 5 because I consider myself crazier than Fripp himself!!!

Improvisation is the soul of the album, an album that defining quirky would be reductive. The atmosphere, if there is one, is very dark, and the sound is as restless as one can imagine. The tracks have at least bizarre names (Mother Hold The Candle While I Shave The Chicken's Lip) and evoke terrifying images (The Slaughter Of The Innocents). Throughout the duration of the concert, the audience remains silent, prey to these cursed 57 minutes of music on the edge of noise. We only hear a few timid claps during the intro of The Night Wounds Time.
The musicians are beyond dispute and are excellent, especially in this peculiar formation, called a "double trio," because it's as if there are two separate half-bands intertwining to form this unlistenable and annoying wall of sound. On one side, we find Robert Fripp (guitar and keyboards), Trey Gunn (guitar), and Pat Mestelotto (percussion); on the other, there is Adrian Belew (guitar), Tony Levin (bass), and Bill Bruford (percussion and marimba).

Is it jazz? Is it progressive? But no! It's just a crazy jumble of sounds, not even intertwined, but rather overlapped. Sometimes we find slow, almost static moments, sometimes distinctly more rhythmic moments, where the confusion remains total nonetheless. Undoubtedly the most difficult album to listen to ever, even though more than listening, one could affirm that it's about enduring, the latter being a quality the listener must possess in large quantities. 'THRaKaTTaK' is not one of those albums that you either hate or love: you just detest it, it's hate at first listen. It's money thrown away, indeed... the King Crimson should be the ones paying anyone courageous enough to buy it.

In conclusion, this: the review present here doesn't recommend anything because more than anything else, it warns to stay away from this monumental nonsense. A person who is already depressed could seriously consider suicide after listening to 'THRaKaTTaK'. Or they could be like me, who, almost for some reason originating from the darkest and most obscure corners of the mad human mind, has somehow decided to become its silent defender and champion. Precisely for all the horrible characteristics listed above, I feel compelled to say that I love this album. I love it because it represents one of the extreme limits that music can reach. I love it because it's an enormous folly and unbearably a dud, of genius and lowly proportions.

Perhaps that's what drives me to get up in the middle of the night to listen to it and then fall back asleep prey to nightmares... because I am convinced I have discovered the exact meeting point between great genius and total madness.