King Crimson - Larks' Tongues in Aspic (Part II) (Live At The Warfield Theatre, 1995)

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Musicologists, active now in analysis of popular music and its performance, love to find a piece produced by a band and performed by it decades apart. ‘Larks’ Tongues in Aspic: Part Two’ (LTiA2), for example, was performed and recorded in quartet (1982), quintet (1973), sextet (1995), and septet (2016) formats. Musicology heaven!

Perhaps we could ask resident King Crimson musicologist Andrew Keeling to do a slim, book-length analysis of the performances of just this piece alone. It would speak volumes about the context of the performances; their locations, their sonics, their instrumentation, the performance choices and who’s making them, the development of electronic processing devices (through which the signal of an electric guitar, for example, can be transformed), and much more. The 1973 original version of LTiA2 may have been a bit feeble, but it was detailed and clear. 20 years later, here at the Warfield in San Francisco, CA, detail is clouded within the roar of six guys hammering hard.

Is there such a thing as too much processing? When you process your instrument, it impacts the way my unprocessed instrument is perceived when we share the same aural space. Your processing intersects and interacts with his, whose own sonic alterations also interact with others. The entire sound of the band is altered. But processing of the sound begins when the note is struck and it whizzes around the aural space – let’s say a bright concert hall, perfect for classical instruments - which adds its own colour. If you then put up a mic, the sound is processed through amplification, and so on. Most of this is fine and dandy, up to a point. But whatever Trey Gunn, stage left, may or may not be doing here on his Warr guitar/bass, is more or less inaudible to these ears. This ensemble may have gone past that point.

In 1982, King Crimson was a quartet, with freedom and enjoyment in its performances. By 1995, the band has become literally and metaphorically darker, heavier, hemmed in by the sheer density of people and processing. But if you really want a good ‘compare and contrast’ exercise, take a refreshing listen to that original quintet recording in early 1973, with percussionist Jamie Muir. Such a sedate tempo! So polite! So tame! So little processing! But so much audible detail! But by 1995, the world had become a rougher place, and this 1995 version of the song reflects that.

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