Search This Blog

Thursday, May 10, 2018

King Crimson: Discipline

KING CRIMSON: DISCIPLINE (1981)

1) Elephant Talk; 2) Frame By Frame; 3) Matte Kudasai; 4) Indiscipline; 5) Thela Hun Ginjeet; 6) The Sheltering Sky; 7) Discipline.

General verdict: The one record that forever broke the wall between Apollonian and Dionysian.


We have no real reason to believe that it was first and foremost for the sake of extra publicity that Fripp decided to reinstate the name «King Crimson» for a band that had, for several months, sported the name «Discipline» — consisting of himself, Adrian Belew on lead vocals and second guitar, Tony Levin on bass and highly intimidating Chapman stick, and old pal Bill Bruford on regular drums, whacko drums, and pseudo-drums. In fact, «Discipline», eventually relegated to the title and title track of the album, was a perfect name for this new team; I suppose that the main reason for brushing the dust off the King Crimson moniker was that, once the going really got good, Robert understood that he would not be averse to spending a lot of time with those guys — five years, as it turned out, which was much longer than any previous incarnation of KC anyway — and wherever Robert's heart is at the moment, you'll find King Crimson.

Discipline was recorded in mid-1981, and if there is a single base reference point for the album, it is clear enough — Talking Heads. Fripp had plenty of time to watch and interact with the band (and occasionally even play on their records) during his New York period, not to mention being good friends with Brian Eno, who produced their best albums; and Adrian Belew, one of the hottest session players at the time after having worked with Zappa and Bowie, had also paid his dues to the Heads by playing on Remain In Light and accompanying the band on their sub­sequent tour. Like his friend Peter Gabriel, another successful survivor from a previous epoch, Fripp astutely understood where precisely the heart of the artistic future (present?) of rock music was concealed at the moment; and although he spent a bit too much time waiting before reaching out for it — too much to have his name added to the honorary roster of New Wave Pioneers — he did have the advantage of wisdom, planning, and, well, discipline to ensure that the new produc­tion of King Crimson could not be dismissed as cheaply derivative bandwagon-jumping. (Of course, people who «professionally» hate progressive rock while extolling the virtues of New Wave may still feel free to dismiss that production as cheaply derivative bandwagon-jumping, but for the sake of simplicity we will put them in the same group here with Holocaust deniers and flat Earth theory supporters).

So, what is Discipline? A simplistic, but not entirely incorrect, answer would be — seek the average between Larks' Tongues In Aspic and Fear Of Music, and you will be as close to Discipline as possible. In this new avatar of King Crimson, most of the traces of the 1973-74 heaviness have been wiped out — most, but not all, since brutal riffage and thoroughly distorted guitar still play an important role on tracks such as ʽIndisciplineʼ. What has been retained, however, is the «math-rockish» aspect, with complex chord patterns mechanically played in unusual time signatures — but instead of the bluesy and jazzy basis of the past, Fripp and Belew are now more frequently working with heavily syncopated, choppy, funky rhythms that they took right out of the David Byrne / Jerry Harrison textbook; indeed, I am fairly sure that the main reason why Fripp added a second guitarist to the line-up was his impression of those two guys and their interlocking, tightly woven rhythmic patterns — along with a sort of «surely I can do better!» reaction to the relative (relative!) lack of «discipline» in these patterns.

Indeed, upon first hearing a track like ʽElephant Talkʼ, it is easy to decide that it would have perfectly fit in on Fear Of Music. The same kind of paranoid funk; the same type of impression where two guitars and one bass sound like three frightened, scurrying insects running in circles; the same kind of mildly psychotic, babbling, perturbed vocalist who spends more time shouting and hiccuping than actually singing. But there is a reason why Fear Of Music went twice as high in the charts as Discipline: the new King Crimson's approach is much more complex, and though the songs superficially sound danceable, trying to properly dance to them will most likely result in the gravest of injuries. David Byrne actually does sound like an unfortunate victim of modern society when he delves into his alleged phobias on record; Belew and Fripp prefer to make wise­cracking commentary on that society. And even then, Talking Heads songs always have meaning: with King Crimson, you have to work in order to convince yourself that they do.

In a subtle way, there is a third element in these tracks, one that we kept missing on classic KC albums and certainly could never imagine on Talking Heads ones — a subtle, barely perceivable presence of the spirit of Giles, Giles & Fripp. I have always refused to believe that the presence of an «elephant» on Cheerful Insanity (ʽThe Elephant Songʼ) and here (ʽElephant Talkʼ) was pure coincidence, because ʽElephant Talkʼ softly reverts us to the humorous (British?) absurdity of 1968 (never mind that much of the absurdity is provided by an American this time around). As Adrian shouts out lengthy foreign words from dictionaries in a rally-like style, concluding each outburst with a reproachful "it's only talk!", the guitars clash with each other and with the rhythm section in busy, fussy, flurry-roaming fashion, creating the atmosphere of pointless, but still never ending urban commotion... with the image of an «elephant», represented both by the final scorn­ful reference to "elephant talk" and those crazy guitar effects Belew does that really sound like a bigass elephant in heat, towering over all the "brouhaha, boulderdash and ballyhoo". When you really put your mind to it, it is impossible not to see a little bit of that condescending Pythonesque eccentricity that puts the icing on the cake — but also, perhaps, at the same time alienates large bunches of listeners for whom it is much easier to identify with the closer-to-home Byrne sound.

However, ʽElephant Talkʼ is also an exception in that it is the only track on the album that strives to be openly amusing. A great benefit of Discipline is that it actually covers a lot of emotional ground — at their best, King Crimson are never above stirring up the most base human feelings, even if they constantly search for really weird ways to do that. ʽFrame By Frameʼ, if it were an instrumental, would be just a thematic variation on ʽDisciplineʼ (the track); Belew's vocal part gives it a tragical face, even if the lyrics do not specify precisely the nature of the tragedy (one interpretation is that lines like "death by numbers in your own analysis" are his subtle criticism of Fripp's way-too-calculated approach to music making). And ʽMatte Kudasaiʼ, featuring one of the most heavenly slide guitar tones ever captured on tape, is an almost surprisingly accessible ballad, one that you could easily expect on some adventurous country-western album.

Where it all comes together is on ʽThela Hun Ginjeetʼ, to me, still the quintessential early Eighties KC track (although, like almost everything else on here, it became even more impressive live on stage: I almost always listen to the Absent Lovers version instead of this one). Faster and tighter than the rest of them, this anagram for ʽHeat In The Jungleʼ is like a symbolic musical representation of the hustle-and-bustle of modern society — live, Fripp is typically sitting in his chair, mechanically weaving the mother thread riff like an unperturbed, unchangeable Moira, while Belew is frantically running around, throwing off guitar firecrackers and engaging in all sorts of sonic craziness, yet in the end inevitably coming full circle and adding muscular, choppy, scratchy funk support to Fripp's more intricate spinning wheel. On top of this urban madness, we have Fripp overdubbing surreptitiously recorded pieces of Belew's account of how he was accos­ted by gangs and the police in a seedy spot in London, adding to the overall confusion and para­noia. This is the one track of theirs that probably would have felt right at home on Fear Of Music, but chances are most people won't even notice all the symbolic aspects of it because they will be too busy headbanging to the awesome groove. Look no further than ʽThela Hun Ginjeetʼ, though, if you are looking for a piece of music that can be 100% equally assuaging for the mind and the body — admirable as a mixture of mathematical order and improvisational chaos, and at the same time totally stimulating in a "let's go crazy" kind of way.

In the end, however, Fripp gets the upper hand. The title track, admired by some and totally incomprehensible to others, is the distilled and refined essence of this mark of King Crimson: an exercise in coordinated musical complexity that, I imagine, would be tough to beat even today. The amazing achievement of King Crimson is that somehow, in some totally incomprehensible manner, they manage to make this complexity alive and kicking. Perhaps it is the fact that, all of the time, Bruford plays the simplest drum pattern of them all (a pitiful 17/16 next to the 4/4 of the bass drum); more likely, it is because the exercise has a carefully planned and effective build-up, because, apart from all the different time signatures, we also have intelligently prepared shifts of speed and pitch — as the guitarists gradually «warm up» and their imaginary circuit boards start blinking on-and-off like crazy, it is as if those pulses start sending direct signals to specific neurons in your brain, establishing brief one-on-one connections; give in to the effect and this almost literally becomes a violent brainfuck (so I'd actually be cautious about recommending the track to anybody with psychological problems). In any case, ʽDisciplineʼ appeals to my own little inner demons far more than, say, just about anything on Trout Mask Replica — or, if we wind the tape in the opposite direction, far more than any given track by Tool — through a mix of its internal logic and its calm, restrained, but grimly determined playing style.

The album is not note-for-note perfect: one serious misstep, for instance, is ʽThe Sheltering Skyʼ, a nice, but unexceptional, atmospheric piece, slightly New Agey in essence, that for some reason turns out to be the longest track on the album. For anybody else, it could be a career highlight, but in the overall context of Discipline, it has the function of a relaxation piece, a chance to let you catch your breath after the hustle and bustle of ʽThela Hun Ginjeetʼ, and little else. While I have nothing against this, the more-than-eight-minute length bothers me — allegedly, the track was originally terraformed as an improvisation during the band's first rehearsals, which explains the length formally, but the result is that much of it sounds meandering, an accusation that cannot be directed towards any other composition here. Then again, I guess no King Crimson album is ever complete without a bit of meandering (from ʽMoonchildʼ down to ʽProvidenceʼ, we must have played them all), so this had to be expected. But, if you ask me, it is no big surprise that the track pretty much vanished from the live setlist after the 1981-82 tours, and is the only number from Discipline not to be featured (in a generally superior version) on Absent Lovers.

Minor quibbles aside, Discipline is a real mother of a landmark. It introduces a trilogy of records that is arguably the single best example of an old-time progressive rock act creatively adapting to the radically new standards of intelligent music making — in some ways, it might even be thought of as a triumphant culmination of the New Wave movement, summarizing most of its structural and textural achievements and closing the book on it, doing this so firmly, in fact, that no subsequent lineup of King Crimson could be comparable to this one in terms of image trans­formation. An important part of it is also that Discipline reaffirmed, almost to the point of fetish­izing, the role of complex playing technique — where classic New Wave, growing out of the punk movement, still protested against the superfluous complexities of the prog era, Fripp, Belew, Levin, and Bruford showed the world how it was perfectly possible to pacify and merge those two opposites, playing virtuoso-style while at the same time retaining all the, let's say, «body enter­tainment value» of New Wave music.

Of course, it didn't quite work that way in terms of popularity. The new look KC never became a huge commercial act (not that this was ever a part of the original plan), and it is not often that you find Discipline or any of its follow-ups in top critical lists on the «100 best New Wave albums» and suchlike. For all the transformations, Fripp and his brethren remained too brainy (and, per­haps, also too dragged down by their dinosauric reputation) to become major critical darlings in the pop press — the best they could achieve is an aura of polite reverence, where, if you talk about Fripp, you tend to do it politely, but better not to talk about Fripp too much in the first place. But if we make an effort and judge these guys exclusively based on the music, and not on the ability to create a publicity vortex, then Discipline is quite unquestionably going to be in the top five or so records released in 1981. (Fortunately, that is precisely its current status on the RYM listing). And, for that matter, if this is as close as the band ever got to «pure» math-rock (though nobody really knows what pure math-rock is), then it should be the best math-rock album ever made, period. (Studio album, that is: one should always keep in mind that live King Crimson after the transformation is nearly always preferable to studio King Crimson).

19 comments:

  1. "then it should be the best math-rock album ever made, period."
    I rather prefer the Japanese female outfit Tricto, because I think the contrast of "complex playing technique" (including weird tonalities and equally weird rhtythms) and melodies sung in a fluffy poppy manner irresistable. Of course you could counter by saying that exactly the latter doesn't make Tricot a pure mathrock band. In the end your remark equally of course is just an excuse to promote a band I like and you will not review any time soon.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. You, sir, have a very weird sense of humor sometimes. But a weird sense of humor is quite appropriate for a King Crimson page.

      Delete
  2. What's your opinion on the band Tool, George?

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. The new A Perfect Circle album is kinda weak. I hope the new Tool album will fare much better.

      Delete
  3. When I first heard this album I was thrown by how much like the talking heads it sounded like. Eventually I came around when I realized that, great as the talking heads were, they could never play music as complex and multi-sided as this. Of course I later found out that they were all sipping from the same musical stew so to speak and you can't really claim anyone was "ripping off" anyone else. Always wonderful to read your writing about an album you love George; the passion really shines through!

    ReplyDelete
  4. "The same kind of paranoid funk; the same type of impression where two guitars and one bass sound like three frightened, scurrying insects running in circles; the same kind of mildly psychotic, babbling, perturbed vocalist who spends more time shouting and hiccuping than actually singing."

    I have not listened to this great album in a couple of decades, but this passage above brings it right back, describes it to a T.

    ReplyDelete
  5. Discipline (the track) is interesting, but Indiscipline is much better. Just listen closely to Bruford's performance on this track.

    ReplyDelete
  6. This comment has been removed by the author.

    ReplyDelete
  7. "It introduces a trilogy of records that is arguably the single best example of an old-time progressive rock act creatively adapting to the radically new standards of intelligent music making"

    As far as one album goes, Yes 90125 comes to mind as a comparable achievement.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. ASIA could be another example. But neither ASIA nor YES records were honest efforts but more cash in projects. At the time I was 13 years old and I used to enjoy it (Owner of a lonely heart, Don't cry) but 35 years later these works are far away from classics.

      Delete
    2. Kind of opens up a can of worms, though, when a band might just have honestly been trying to cash in. The classics Satisfaction, Can't Explain, Please Please Me all might fall under that heading.

      Delete
    3. Well, I can mention plenty of artists and songs that besides the commercial success we can also find innovation and real achievement. The spirit was different: Good vibrations, Tomorrow never knows, Eleaanor Rigby, Strawberry Fields, Happiness is a warm gun, Vodoo Child, Roundabout, Red, No Quarter, Time among many others.

      Delete
    4. Now you're talking about "real achievement." A lack of "Honest effort" was what struck me as an overly harsh judgment of Asia and latter-day Yes. They can't all be classics -- my point was that many classics aimed for commercial success as much or more than anything. So let's not judge the lesser acts who do so too harshly.

      Delete
  8. "the single best example of an old-time progressive rock act creatively adapting to the radically new standards of intelligent music making"

    Can I take issue with this? What about Yes, What about Genesis? You can even argue Jethro freaking Tull, Rush, hell even Styx can fall backwards into this description at some point.

    Is it even really all that innovative when... you are right, you summarized it correctly... they basically are jamming as some unofficial Talking Heads back up band without the great catchy song writing and the all around commercial appeal of MTV videos etc?

    It's all well and good that King Crimson has some brilliant albums and they could do some epic jams BUT they were always a critics darling without the radio success and they just basically kept doing that same underground thing even when they found a new sound to do it with. Not that surprising really since there was only one member that mattered.

    I like KC fine but I think there are other progressive bands (groups of talented professional people) that took far greater risks modernizing their sounds and risking their combined reputations and careers than something that's best described, especially in it's later incarnation, as one guys vanity project... King Crimson.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. You can take issue with this, but I stand by the statement firmly. Yes, Genesis, and everybody else made a run for the charts, some of them doing better than others, but none of them surpassing or even matching their original work in depth and excitement. Fripp took a completely different approach; no less a "risk" than anybody else, but with much higher payoffs. Considering that they are doing tons of stuff here that Talking Heads would never be able to pull off, it is a bit too condescending calling them a "Talking Heads back up band".

      Delete
    2. I don't think it's that condescending when I agree with many things you have said concerning most of the real "ground breaking sounds" we are talking about in regards to the Talking Heads were created really by Brian Eno and David Byrne with more emphasis on Eno in my mind. Proof being found in My Life in The Bush of Ghosts as an example of the things you brought up.

      Delete
  9. "As Adrian shouts out lengthy foreign words from dictionaries in a rally-like style, concluding each outburst with a reproachful "it's only talk!","

    I think you're missing the point of Elephant Talk. Belew is not shouting out foreign words, he is using English words. The key to it is that all the words used in each verse start with the same letter (A, B, C, D, and E) and that they are all words that describe different types of speech.

    Your example, "brouhaha, boulderdash and ballyhoo" (actually the middle word is balderdash) is a perfect example, with the following definitions:

    Brouhaha: a noisy and overexcited reaction or response to something.

    Balderdash: senseless talk or writing; nonsense.

    Ballyhoo: extravagant publicity or fuss. praise or publicize extravagantly.

    I think it is an extremely clever lyrical use of the English language. It is extremely intelligent and somewhat complex, so it fits with the KC and Fripp image.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Another clue is in the D verse, which goes:

      Talk
      Talk
      It's only talk
      Debates
      Discussions
      These are words with a D this time
      Dialogue
      Dualogue
      Diatribe

      Dissention
      Declamation
      Double talk
      Double talk

      Delete