This incarnation of the King was comprised of David Cross, Robert Fripp, John Wetton, Bill Buford, and Jamie Muir. I am enthralled by “Larks Tongues in Aspic, Part I.”

A kalimba close to the ear, pretty patterns over and over, grindings, ringings, scrapings. It is like moving through a pleasantly working galaxy of atoms and molecules all going about their business. Menacing enormity is near.

When I was a child, I would at night be clutched by a simultaneous sensation of absolute universal hard round enormity and absolute sharp brittle minuteness. This terror was called The Bigs and The Littles.

This music is like that. Horrible buzzing guitar, very distant. Gradually, a tribal beat takes over, drums like tin cans and garbage lids, wicked war drums, drums of ritual. Unconscious deep unnoticed bass solo. Like a spindly creature or a dry weed the violin spins a tale which is shouted away by pulsing guitar and voices from a soap opera, and the violin is frantic with melodrama. Sudden huge whirling of brilliant things and then it is dying dying tinkling tinkling softly tinkling dying. Shhhhhhhhh.

King Crimson, Larks Tongues in Aspic, Atlantic Records, SD 7263 (1973).  Album Design – Tantra Designs, London.