King Crimson – Larks’ Tongue In Aspic
(March 23, 1973, Island records in UK, Atlantic Records in United States)
Personnel –
Robert Fripp – electric and acoustic guitars, Mellotron, Hohner pianet
John Whetton – bass, vocals, piano on “Exiles”
Bill Bruford – drums, timbales, cowbell, wood block
David Cross – violin, viola, Mellotron, Hohner pianet, flute on “Exiles”
Jamie Muir – assorted percussion and drums
Link to Apple Music
Link to Spotify
Link to entire album on YouTube
London progressive rock band King Crimson is a group more often name-dropped than actually heard. For years if a critic would describe an edgy, instrumental heavy and guitar forward “progressive” band, odds are King Crimson would be cited as an influence. But while Crimson spawned a sea of imitators, they remain more a reference point, and ironically their music is woefully under-examined.
Another part of the problem is aside from their legendary debut, you could not actually get their records. However, that all changed last year when Crimson celebrated its 50th anniversary by releasing their discography on the streaming services. So now to hear this formerly obscure and esoteric band, all you have to do is pick up the computer in your pocket and search “King Crimson” in either Spotify or Apple Music. Let’s discuss what makes their music special, and you can listen along if you wish. I am going to take you on a tour of what is arguably the band’s defining album, 1973’s Larks’ Tongue In Aspic.
The Larks’ Tongue lineup: from left, Robert Fripp, Jamie Cross, John Whetton, Jamie Muir and Bill Bruford (DGM Live)
King Crimson is not the typical progressive rock band. In the brief and strange period of the early 1970’s, when fur-coat clad, keyboard toting, utterly extravagant prog rock acts like Emerson Lake & Palmer and Genesis inexplicably packed stadiums, King Crimson sat outside the limelight, quietly blazing a future for the genre after many of their peers wore their novelty thin. The personality of King Crimson is mainly a reflection of it’s guitarist/melotron player and leader, Robert Fripp. Fripp differentiated his band from other groups operating in progressive rock by borrowing from jazz and embracing a high minded self-seriousness, while their counterparts looked to classical music and campy eccentricity. Whether conscious or not, this choice diminished the initial popularity of King Crimson in exchange for music that would hold up to modern sensibilities.
Their debut album, In the Court of the Crimson King (1969), is legendary to many for arguably birthing the world of progressive rock. Court brought a refreshing edginess to the English music scene after the saccharine sweet British Invasion, birthing a dissonant, jazzy sound that King Crimson would… soon drop in favor of commercial obscurity. Their follow up album, In the Wake of Poseidon, is likely Crimson’s most creatively bankrupt – a thematic retread of Court, even down to the track structure and naming convention. Third time proved not to be a charm with Lizard, a new height of weirdness for an already weird band, infusing rock n’ roll with the strange world of chamber music. If nothing else, it was wholly original, and loveable in its own weird way.
Although I hold these first three albums dear, especially Lizard’s wonderful peculiarity, in objective terms Crimson had two big stumbles after their artistic breakout. Introspection was in order. The first generation of King Crimson dissolved and made way for a new, powerful lineup, and a pivot in sonic direction for Fripp. Rather than borrowing from the influences of other musical forms and splicing them into the genetic code of rock music, Crim’s next foray into the outer limits would be deconstructive – breaking down rock’s double helix and shuffling the genes therein. Thus, Larks’ Tongues in Aspic was born – rock music at its most dissonant and dynamic.
Crimson live, picture likely from 1973 after Jamie Muir left the band – from left, David Cross, John Whetton, Bill Bruford and Robert Fripp
Larks’ Tongue In Aspic’s opening drama captures all you need to know. The album starts at the volume of a whisper while Gamelan-inspired percussion slowly builds. Fripps’ acerbic guitar enters with a jagged and dissonant riff, which then spills into one of the loudest guitar hooks ever commited to record. “Larks’ Tongue In Aspic, Part I” is a study in wild extremes that will either have you enraptured or rushing for the “off” button. It’s rock, but stripped of sentimentality and taken to jarring (and influential) extremes.
The quiet and contemplative ballad, “Book of Saturday” is another shock, drenched in melancholy that is distinctive and unexpected after the extreme noise of the opening track. And John Whetton has one of the saddest voices, which beautifully intertwines with David Cross’ violin and Fripp’s melodic guitar.
Speaking of beauty, next is the album’s stunning ballad, “Exiles.” The lyrics evoke the melancholy of travel – “Spring, and the air’s turning mild / City lights and the glimpse of a child.” Mellotron, acoustic guitar and violin-led harmonies flow like a tapestry of emotion sprawled across the lyrics’ pastoral scenes, bursting out in wistful explosions of melody and simmering into arresting quiet.
The next track couldn’t be any more different. “Easy Money” is the most straightforward rock song on this album, but that’s not to downplay it. Verses espousing effigial structures to avarice – “We could take the money home / Sit around the family throne / For two weeks we could appease the Almighty,” and sound effects – the hissing of a snake, the crinkling of a cash wad, and a disembodied zipper – craft a black-comedy tone, making light of the absurdity of its setting and characters. King Crimson in this iteration were masters of tongue-in-cheek satire; “The Great Deceiver” off their next album, 1974’s Starless and Bible Black, pokes holes at the commercialization of religion in the Catholic Church – “Cigarettes, ice cream / Figurines of the Virgin Mary.” “Easy Money” is classic rock with none of it’s swagger. Moreso than any other track on this album, it embodies dissonance and deconstruction, the polish and swagger of rock n’ roll ripped away and only retaining the structural viscera of its original form.
Crimson from 1974 Atlantic Records promotional material (from 1973 after Jamie Muir left) – Fripp, ever the unobtrusive bandleader, always seems to be hanging out in the background!
Every King Crimson track has the “instrumental” track, a flex of Robert Fripp’s auterial power, conveying the band’s use of dynamics and evident jazz influences. Larks’ uses the “The Talking Drum” as a carefully calibrated transition to create tension. The track begins with the distorted cries of horns and slowly builds into the frenetic percussion rhythm created by a talking drum, a double-sided West African drum that is said to sound like a person speaking – the track ramps up into a breakbeat race, flying over Jamie Cross’ wailing violin and the moaning of distorted electric guitar into an abrupt ending of literal screaming strings . . .
. . . with no gap to take a breath, we slam into the album closer and bookend to its first part, “Larks Tongues in Aspic, Pt. 2.” Really, the only way to define this track is epic. Fripp’s guitar sound has a radiant energy, the drums provide frenetic texture, and the violin screeches over the entirety, oscillating between the impending siren of an ambulance, and a Greek chorus imploring the band members to not play so immaculately, lest they be cursed with the Sisyphean task of making material as good. And is it not immaculate? A handful of the defining moments of progressive music come from this track alone, including a completely diabolical guitar riff that bisects the song into two wholes, progressive metal followed by complete insanity. If Part 1 was the album’s thesis statement – “We’re King Crimson and we’re going to make some really weird music” – Part 2 is the grandiose conclusion, drawing together every significant element from the rest of the project into a complete statement. It is a perfect album closer – the catharsis of six tracks of discipline uncuffed and bounding into a chaotic coda.
There are so many other worthy albums and distinct eras to discuss in King Crimson’s lineup – the dark masterpiece Red, the New Age-inspired, Talking Heads-adjacent Discipline, or the postmodernist capstone to their career The Power to Believe, stuck somewhere between meaningful critique of society and unashamed thrash metal. I haven’t even mentioned 1971’s Islands, my personal favorite album from Crimson, a cosmic jazz masterpiece weaving ethereal soundscapes and hard-hitting instrumentation into a conceptual tale reminiscent of Homer’s Odyssey. Even still, Larks’ Tongues in Aspic is the album that best embodies the caustic examination and destruction of popular rock music that is central to this band, and also something new on top of the remains of pop-rock – the virtuoistic creation of some really, really weird music.
Felt portrait of King Crimson by Wasawasawa
Bonus listening/viewing:
There seem to be few video documents of King Crimson from their classic 60’s and 70’s lineups, but one exception are two tracks from Larks’ Tongue recorded for German TV at the Beat Club in Bremen on October 17th, 1972. These recordings are really special because the Crimson experience is really visual, especially in this lineup with Jamie Muir’s wild (and mesmerizing) percussion antics. Two videos exist: and appropriately intense “Larks’ Tongue in Aspic, Part 1” and a really beautiful “Exiles.”
Yes, that’s my LP copy of Larks’ Tounge In Aspic!