KING CRIMSON
Earthbound PANEGYRIC
Remastered 200g vinyl release for unfairly maligned live album.
When Earthbound was first released in 1972, many people assumed it was King Crimson’s swan song, with yet another version of the band having just self-destructed. In fact, the group had split before the tour on which Earthbound was recorded, Robert Fripp having pissed off saxophonist Mel Collins, singer/bassist Boz Burrell and drummer Ian Wallace once too often. Yet contractually bound, they reassembled to play the US, leaving this fearsome kiss-off in its wake.
Recorded directly onto Ampex cassette tape, the initial positioning of Earthbound was as a budget-price official bootleg, but for the longest time, Fripp disowned the album due to its poor sound quality and jam band vibe. Yet after finally getting a remastered bells-and-whistles CD release in 2017, here it is now for the first time on 200g vinyl.
While it’s certainly not a Hi-Fi experience, neither is it unlistenable. In fact, if your taste in live albums is for the gritty immersion of Hawkwind’s
Space Ritual rather than something that’s live in name only, this might be your favourite King Crimson record. Anticipating the title of KC Mark 1’s actual swan song in 1974, this is an album that really is recorded ‘in the red’: the angry version of 21st Century Schizoid Man distorted into an monolithic thud. Nevertheless, the playing is superb, with Fripp absolutely flying on his solo, albeit sometimes fighting to be heard above the percussive thunderstorm generated by Wallace.
Yet it’s the improv pieces that are most interesting here. Peoria is positively groovy, Collins vamping around a nice bluesy motif before hitting overdrive, while Fripp squelches along funkily underneath – though KC fans of a nervous disposition may need to reach for the smelling salts when Burrell does his scat singing thing. Earthbound occupies similar territory, but the initially jazzy Groon is hijacked by a drum solo, which itself is then brutally filtered via a VCS3 synth. A live album that takes no prisoners.