King Crimson - Islands

Released - December 1971

Genre - Progressive Rock

Producer - Robert Fripp & Peter Sinfield

Selected Personnel - Robert Fripp (Guitar/Mellotron); Boz Burrell (Vocals/Bass); Mel Collins (Saxophone/Flute); Ian Wallace (Drums/Percussion); Keith Tippett (Piano); Robin Miller (Oboe); Mark Charig (Cornet)

Standout Track - Islands

In the annals of prog history, King Crimson will always be "the unpopular one" of the movement's major players. Having burst onto the scene in 1969 with one of the most incendiary and arresting debuts of all time, In The Court Of The Crimson King, the band seemed poised to become the next big thing, but subsequent shifts in the lineup and the iconoclastic artful preoccupations of bandleader Robert Fripp meant the band went further and further down a road into experimentalism and alien sounds, while bands like Yes and Genesis managed to maintain at least half an eye on what the general public wanted to hear, succeeding in making music that had the artfulness and the intelligence of Crimson but was also capable of delivering strong melodic hooks and broader appeal. The downside of this was the fact that Crimosn were doomed to never really have a major hit to their name or to really embed themselves into the musical consciousness of the nation. The advantage was that, even when they made bad records, they were always interesting and always staying true to the spirit of inventiveness and pushing boundaries that prog was made for. They might never have made a successful album, but they also never made an album that made compromises by attempting to be more radio-friendly and cheapening the band's sound, as could be the said for the likes of Yes's rather tedious effort Tormato. Even in the 80s, when most other prog bands morphed into stadium pop rock acts to survive the sea-change in audience sensibilities, Crimson responded by morphing into Talking Heads-style purveyors of New Wave weirdness. By 1971, that destiny had more or less been carved out for them (1973 would see a brief resurgence in their popularity, but by now Fripp & co. had more or less committed to the idea of making whatever the hell they wanted no matter whether the buying public would care for it).

It's in this mindset that Islands appeared, one of the weirder records the band put out in its diverse styles and weird, muddy sound. In the aftermath of Lizard, the majority of the band had jumped ship due to their distaste for the avant-garde jazz and neo-classical sound of the album, most of them being fairly conventional rhythm-and-blues fans. Fripp was left with lyricist Pete Sinfield (whose relationship with Fripp was strained by this time as both were increasingly interested in very different musical territories) and saxophonist Mel Collins. To this lineup was added drummer Ian Wallace and bassist and vocalist Boz Burrell. That just a few years later Burrell, who croons out some neo-classical poetry and jams along to a menacing art rock monster track, would be playing bass for the back-to-basics bluesy rock of Bad Company is one of the strange unforseeable twists of fate that occur all the time in music. Here, despite going on to be such an icon of classic hard rock, Burrell acquits himself well with Crimson's style, being an infinitely more accomplished and nuanced singer than the outgoing Gordon Haskell. However, there is a definite sense listening to Islands that this is no longer a functioning band but a bizarre musical project spinning out of the ambitious mind of Fripp himself - one song, the lovely "Prelude: Song Of The Gulls" features only Robin Miller's plaintive oboe set to the lush orchestrations of a string quartet. It's a beautiful piece, but one that sets King Crimson apart as a collection of musical ideas played by one man and whoever he can convince to work with him rather than a group of people playing and working together.

This has its ups and its downs - Fripp's commitment to weird ideas and to musical diversity and ambition creates some of the album's least convincing moments. The opening "Formentera Lady" is a fiercely dull, plodding piece that opens with the muddy scraping of a cello and then slogs its way through some typical Sinfield lyrical nonsense before segueing into "Sailor's Tale." That lengthy beast eventually picks up speed and becomes genuinely impressive via Fripp's astonishingly frenetic guitar shredding and Burrell's earth-shattering explosive bass near the song's climax. Up until that, it continues to plod through the same slow patterns set up by "Formentera Lady." From then on, however, this album is a real revelation and a forgotten classic. "The Letters" is a real showcase for the nightmarish noise explosions that Crimson can do so well, and also the greatest example of what a great vocalist Burrell was capable of being. From his hushed intonation of the opening lines it moves through the cacophany of saxes and distorted guitar that wail through the song's midsection to climax with Burrell's spine-chillingly passionate wail near the end. It's followed by "Ladies Of The Road," perhaps the most traditional blues-influenced song King Crimson ever recorded, but rendered characteristically weird and unusual by Fripp's distorted guitar effects, while Burrell's smug, achingly cool rendition of the song makes you almost overlook just how misogynistic it is. The band then pulls off a trick they managed very rarely elsewhere in their career, and manage to finish the album off with two tracks of intense beauty. The aforementioned "Prelude: Song Of The Gulls" is a pleasant little number, but the real highlight of the record (and one of the highlights of the band's career) is the beautifully tranquil "Islands," which sees Burrell's voice retreating back into the softness of the opening strains of "The Letters" and narrating a scene of isolated idyll over the gently lilting piano of Keith Tippett. The song slowly builds in grandeur and magnificence as Fripp's stately Mellotron comes to dominate and Mark Charig's improvised cornet solos take off into the stratosphere as the whole thing builds to an ecstatic climax. For a band known for being frightening and abnormal and nightmarish, it's a rare insight into just how beautiful they could be when Fripp really set his mind to it, and is one of the great beauties of prog music. Sadly, it's doomed to never be heard by anyone considering how neglected this album is in the King Crimson discography.

Genrally, it's a much more cohesive and coherent album than Lizard, despite the plodding tedium of most of the first two tracks. Sadly, it was not to be an indication of any sort of new direction for King Crimson, as yet another reshuffle of the lineup was on the cards. Fripp increasingly felt himself moving in a different musical direction to Sinfield, who favoured the calmer, more introspective moments of Islands over Fripp's preferred moments of weird-sounding innovation, and the two soon went their separate ways. The rest of the band would soon follow, feeling unable to cohere with Fripp's tyrannical control over the group. As a result, King Crimson would cease to exist for a couple of years before returning as a radically new beast in 1973 to deliver a trilogy of albums that would be perhaps their last essential work. Islands, then, is the final outing for the symphonic and more "traditional" prog sound of early Crimson before they truly changed their identity, and it's a fitting testament to everything those early iterations of the band achieved. It's nowhere near as surprising or accomplished as In The Court Of The Crimson King, but it almost makes up for it in elegance and beauty.

Track Listing:

1. Formentera Lady (Robert Fripp & Peter Sinfield)

2. Sailor's Tale (Robert Fripp)

3. The Letters (Robert Fripp & Peter Sinfield)

4. Ladies Of The Road (Robert Fripp & Peter Sinfield)

5. Prelude: Song Of The Gulls (Robert Fripp)

6. Islands (Robert Fripp & Peter Sinfield)