Beat (30th Anniversary Edition) - King Crimson

...mocking self-derision. I chose Beat because it is one of those albums that tastes change with, feelings move with. OK, it hasn’t changed my life but how many artefacts can truly be said to have changed someone’s life. Then when people claim so, how many people are not lost in an act of sublime self-delusion?

But then, maybe I’m just a (young) cynic. But to return to the point, Beat was the culmination of patient listening. Like so ...
...
Then I bought Beat and from the first moment I thought: I like this album. Now with almost all Crimson albums I have (and I have all the studio albums if not the myriad live recordings available) it takes a listen to two or get into the album, to feel at ease with the music. I shall explain. Crimson is a band that does not have a uniform sound beyond the fact that they will not guarantee you an easy listen. Crimson uses the musical vernacular ... more

Those conversant with the King Crimson back catalogue might be asking themselves why of all their albums I have chosen to write an Op on Beat. Why indeed. I find this a remarkably simple question to answer. Some weeks ago I asked Ciao to add it, started writing an Op then stopped. I asked myself why also and then went and asked for Absent Lovers (KC live in Montreal) to be added too. Then I looked back on my decision with a kind of despair and gentle, mocking self-derision. I chose Beat because it is one of those albums that tastes change with, feelings move with. OK, it hasn’t changed my life but how many artefacts can truly be said to have changed someone’s life. Then when people claim so, how many people are not lost in an act of sublime self-delusion?

But then, maybe I’m just a (young) cynic. But to return to the point, Beat was the culmination of patient listening. Like so many others I had a copy of In The Court of the Crimson King. It’s a masterpiece: yes, but it’s also an album that is too well known, it held no mysteries for me. In the final year of university, in between lectures (I had two a week in my final year so much free time) and creative musing I found myself suddenly buying CDs in an amount that I had never previously done. Musically, I was moving into a new territory. I bought my second Crimson album which turned out to be Lizard. Lizard is scary; a difficult listen built out of Fripp and others’ insane jazz noises. It should have scared me off. I persevered and found myself able to interact with Lizard; we called a truce with one another and have had a mutually beneficially life together ever since.

Then I bought Beat and from the first moment I thought: I like this album. Now with almost all Crimson albums I have (and I have all the studio albums if not the myriad live recordings available) it takes a listen to two or get into the album, to feel at ease with the music. I shall explain. Crimson is a band that does not have a uniform sound beyond the fact that they will not guarantee you an easy listen. Crimson uses the musical vernacular and twist (some might argue warp) it into something that is entirely their own (just witness their ProjeKcts – now there is something challenging and occasionally brilliant). So, Beat, arriving fresh and new in 1982 after their return with Discipline, could be seen to have them working within that art-pop stylings ala Talking Heads (Adrian Belew also played on TH’s greatest album, Remain in Light – as did Eno [I had to add that, sorry]). In fact many people at the time believed Crimson sounded a lot like the Talking Heads. I don’t agree with this as Crimson are clearly the more progressive band, willing to use their minds as well as their instruments in a way that the Talking Heads could never match (as good as they could be).

Really it was a new beginning for Crimson, having come to a grinding halt after their album Red in 1974. Only Robert Fripp and Bill Bruford survived the 70s line-up to be joined by Adrian Belew (vocals/guitar) and Tony Levin (bass/stick). Together they created three albums in the 80s before failing to further themselves musically and split for another 10 years.

Beat was their middle, oft overlooked album. Though it has many of their greatest, most beautiful pieces of music. It has a restraint that Discipline lacks and a mood that their third album: Three of a Perfect Pair lacked. It is not a perfect album, Beat, but it comes close. If nothing else the first 5 songs that appear on the album are a stream of emotive, innovative genius.

But what of the album, what does it sound like, how did it make me feel?

A paean to the highs, lows and horror of leaving loved ones behind whilst touring, Neil and Jack and Me does not have the most prepossessing title at first glance, but then it gets across its point: touring there is Neal and Jack and Me, no one else. It is full of minute observations regarding life on the road. “Eating apples in vans and sandwiches/rushing through the lobby life of hurry-up-and-wait, hurry-up-and-wait, that lead to fresh soap and envelopes.” I quote these lyrics by heart and that is something rare for me. At first glance I overlooked Neal and Jack and Me ever so slightly and now I think it is just magnificent, from Tony Levin’s synth to Belew’s breathless vocals. The music is kinda eighties but in such a glorious transcendent way. It starts off slowly, building up pace, and there is real, taut, pent up feeling to Belew yelling “Absent lovers, absent lovers” (even more so as Belew’s lyrics and liner notes point to his uxoriousness). This is just the finest possible way to begin an album, there is so much passion here that it hurts to listen to it. When I finally got hold of a live version of the track I was ridiculously, smirklingly happy.

Like a perfect foil, Sartori in Tangiers in an Indian tinged instrumental that is almost divinely brilliant. Crimson are one of the few rock bands ever that can make genuinely brilliant instrumentals. They are rarely overly extravagant and Sartori in Tangiers is just sublime. Levin’s thudding bass giving way to Fripp’s controlled beat covered by Belew trademark screeching guitar. But it is almost impossible to describe the beauty in this track. It so perfectly evokes the title that it is hard to know how they did it. Still it sounds as if you walked out into the North African night you would find yourself before 4 strange buskers (Crimson, of course) playing Sartori in Tangiers then you would think, this is exactly how it should be in that place. The interplay between Fripp, Levin and Bruford’s controlled use of their instruments makes Belew wild, trademark psychotic guitar seem in no way extravagant, as much high, near-strident guitar does. Simply, it transcends description into and is quite beautful. The Second CD of Absent Lovers opens with Sartori in Tangiers and it is sheer bliss.

But greater still is Crimson’s ability to write what in other bands hands would either be bland ballads or dubious power-ballads. But no, Heartbeat (also the best song about sex I know) is the greatest track on the album and possibly my favourite Crimson track of all time. Better than, well, all the rest. The lyrics are simple, but from the first moment of distorted synth it just somehow does everything right. It is a tight little number, a song to make you weep without crying it’s so full of feeling. Beyond that I can’t really explain it, because listening to it as I am at this precise moment, all I can say is that everyone involved is exactly, perfectly controlled. Fripp’s guitar trickery is in no way his usual extravagant, self-indulgent self; Belew’s occasional flourishes are discreet (his vocals are quietly passionate – his uxoriousness once again – “my hands in your hair, hands in your hair… oh, the rhythm we made, rhythm we made. I need to land some time, feel your heartbeat…”]). The song even comes to a gentle, quiet end. I don’t know what else to say but I love this song as much if not more than any other I know. It’s subtle and emotive and yet there is nothing in the least bit saccharine about it, nor does it attempt to move you with cheap sentimentality. I can only think it as being the epitome of great musicians utilising their skills in a manner so rare and refined that it breaks the heart.

Bruford’s electronic percussives pulsate throughout Waiting Man, a song with unusual, near normal and yet completely bizarre lyrics. A man waiting for someone he loves and yet told in a disjointed, abstract fashion. The song builds slowly. Bruford’s drumming; enter Levin’s Stick; Fripp layering guitar over both: all controlled, a delicate repetition of sound, over which flow Belew’s melancholy lyrics. It is a song that exists, like the work of Philip Glass, on subtle changes of pitch, tone, oscillation. The music appears to barely change and yet it slowly shifts, until finally, Fripp gives as close to a guitar solo as the album gets, and then it is controlled, regimented as is Bruford/Levin’s backing. Finally, Belew plays his guitar so stridently that it almost sounds as if there’s a klaxon screaming away. I go into this unusual (for me) detail to try and put across the fact that there are myriad layers of sound in this track, this album and in Crimson as a whole. There is nothing anaemic about it, and though it sounds as if it should be pretentious or just noise, I say no, it is something completely different. Waiting Man is a diverse song, both simple and complex and ultimately an exciting listen. The invention on display and the subtlety with which it is displayed is astounding.

Neurotica is perhaps not a song that many would willingly listen to but I love it. The lyrics are about as barmy as possible. “Look at that man over there conversing with a magazine stand, evidently he’s getting a good reply,” stands out as about the sanest lyric in the whole song. Many would call the music that goes beneath Belew’s chatty, witty observations of the horrific noise and the populace wildlife that is city life as a cacophony. There is certainly something disturbed to it. The music is wild, shrieking; there appears to be no method to their madness and yet there is. Neurotica is not a dirge rather the music echoes the chaos of the city Belew is watching; then when in terms of the lyrics, he described physically wading through the city and begins to sing normally, the music settles down and flows under him gently, buoying up his voice. Then Belew begins his detached observations once more and the music once again careens off where angels fear to tread. This is cathartic music for giants, a song that leaves you worn out and breathless and what’s wrong with that?

Two Hands is a curiosity, if only because the lyrics were written by Adrian Belew’s wife. The lyrics are rather abstract and once again touch on the subject of love, of unity as does Heartbeat but in a more obscure manner. I never liked Two Hands at first, I thought it was a bit of a come down after the brilliance of the first five tracks but now I have changed my mind. I have come to recognise (I was an uncouth youth then) the intelligence in the lyrics. It was a song that grew on me until I suddenly realised that it was too a great song, maybe not as great as that which preceded it as it hasn’t quite the musical oomph. But then that could always be that after being savaged by Neurotica anything that would come afterwards would not sit quite right. Still, it is a track that many would refer to as a sleeper, being quietly emotive and beautifully controlled.

Now The Howler is a bit of a weak link. Sometimes I love it because it’s exactly what it says on the box. Belew howls. Instruments howl. It’s a real mood song. If I’m in the mood then the excessive shrieking stridence is perfect. If not then it’s becomes grating, though not an annoyance. I guess the Howler is an acquired taste and in my case I acquire it from time to time.

The final track is another instrumental of the same ilk as The Sheltering Sky on Discipline (which is beautiful by the way). Requiem is just that, a slow sombre piece with a great deal of gently distorted Frippian guitar. It doesn’t fall flat nor does it really quite work. It is that rare thing for Crimson: it is a mediocre track. I’ll confess I often skip it, though maybe I should return to it and try to re-evaluate it. It’s a shame that such a fine album ends on such a note, but then all good things must end.

Surprisingly the whole album only last about 32 minutes; it’s not a long album. The first five tracks barely take up 20 minutes. Despite the occasional weak link, I see Beat as a minor masterpiece (maybe because the weaker parts show the greater for what they are). I have a kind of unspeakable admiration and curiously emotional attachment to this album. Not that it signifies anything for me; there is no song on here that could be said to belong to me and a significant other – to be ‘our song.’ The album is simply an emotional tour-de-force. Something within it sings out to me and touches me in a way that I find hard to describe and perhaps would not wish to acknowledge for there is definitely a melancholy undertone to Beat. For all the controlled instrumentation and emotive vocals there is certainly a sense of loss, of deep down hurt. And yet there is exhilaration in songs such as heartbeat that truly soar and make this contradictory and brilliant album that which is it: magnificent.

I love it, wouldn’t change it for the world; not even the bad bits. What more can be said?

For those inspired, Amazon will generously sell you a copy for a mere £7.99, and recently re-mastered too, though sadly without the bonus tracks which appear on the re-mastered copies of Disciple and Three of a Perfect Pair.

 

...less