DGM / Panegyric 2024
Never repeating themselves, even under stress, Transatlantic ensemble take Europe in tremendous stride.
Sheltering Skies:
Live In Fréjus, August 27th 1982
When this foursome took to the “Arènes de Fréjus” stage during the final leg of their “Beat” tour, Robert Fripp, Bill Bruford, Adrian Belew and Tony Levin knew their performance was bound to turn out special – otherwise, they wouldn’t have filmed the concert to issue as “The Noise” further on up the road – as the players were far from being on their last legs. Quite the contrary: fatigue might set in by then, yet the quartet’s robust approach defied it, and if their two last studio albums sounded dry, intentionally so, the then-fresh pieces appeared somehow more dramatic in front of an audience, with theatrical nervousness, which characterized that era of the ensemble’s existence, dissolving in the exciting ether of live environment. Only there’s a slightly less than perfect document of the collective’s erstwhile intensity: out of context, nothing is wrong here – but, as opposed to the 2012 arrival of the same recordings as the “The King Crimson Collectors’ Club” download, the physical release veered away from the original running order, and the show’s dynamic changed.
The magic is there nevertheless – and is sonically spectacular. Driven with Fripp’s riffs and fueled by Belew’s more contemporary approach, incorporating feedback into the frenzied, yet excitingly danceable, grooves whose regular shifts, dictated either by Bruford’s percussive contraptions or Levin’s Stick, keep the listener constantly focused, what “A Man A City” wrapped in menace and mystery in previous years gets stripped of it all in favor of urban playfulness. Still, a former opener “Waiting Man” – logically damp with expectancy which would be resolved later on in the crowd’s exultant response to the “Is it good?” cries of the expansive “Indiscipline” – loses a certain amount of momentum when moved to the penultimate slot to anticipate the jubilant “Larks’ Tongues In Aspic, Part II” that served as an encore before. Of course, the vibrantly lyrical, albeit insistent and propulsive, “Thela Hun Ginjeet” proposes a punchier gambit as a result, but as the rhythms pass between Tony’s tapping and Bill’s acoustic and electronic drums, with Ade adding to the heated hits, sweet delirium and spicy ecstasy merge in a boiling cauldron of exultant tribalism. Here’s a possible reason for the unearthly “Matte Kudasai” to land earlier in the set, rather than provide a respite after the wailing “Red” whose ever-dangerous instrumental assault and explosive flow transform into the “Don’t Walk” sign without feeling pedestrian and pull “Heartbeat” into this humid street atmosphere where bass and guitars weave a velvet-glove attack.
And then there is “The Sheltering Sky” – a sprawling adventure in a six-string-painted wuthering heights in which Belew and Fripp bounce solos off each other to sculpt a soundscape that doesn’t require ivories to engulf everyone in mesmeric pulse, with the piece’s more relaxed bonus version from the preceding night, spent in Cap d’Agde, exposing the band’s reluctance to dwell in any aural place for too long. Yet though “Elephant Talk” projects funky anxiety through the wild work of plectrums, “Neal And Jack And Me” offers a cerebral sort of a dervish swirl – so perhaps, decreasing the record’s emotional degree via “Waiting Man” doesn’t seem such a bad idea. Devoid of redundant knowledge of history, however, this release, for all its flaws, must be considered brilliant.
*****
