King Crimson - Starless

Starless by King Crimson. Another taster from the new King Crimson album - "Radical Action to Unseat the Hold of Monkey Mind".

As those lucky enough to have seen it live will know, the opening chord of this song are often accompanied by an intake of breath. Like an incoming tide of realisation, all the variations on "I never thought I’d hear this live", or "crikey, this is my favourite", "OMG I’ve died and gone to heaven" and a few more sentiments besides.

The complexities behind capturing the seven-headed Crimson on video are described in David Singleton's liner notes :

"It is something of a truism in the history of Crimson that any show that is filmed will not be one when heaven meets earth and the angels descend. The presence of cameras and cameramen iintroduces an intrusive element into the relationship between the artist, the music and the audience. Our solution was to return to the concept of "BootlegTV" and prioritise the music and the performance rather than the pictures. We embedded a single cameraman (the long-suffering Trevor Wilkins) on this tour, and he filmed every night with a a series of cameras hidden discreetly on the stage where they would intrude on neither artist nor audience. The compromise is thus in the visuals and not in the music."

The set was recently described by John Kelman in "All about jazz" as "the definitive live Crimson release from the definitive live Crimson lineup; a landmark recording from a group whose discography is filled with them."