Customer Reviews

Live Groove

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3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

After the mid-90s King Crimson experiment, Robert Fripp thought it would be a good idea to form subdivisions of the band, to keep ideas going in the absence of the complete band (dubbed by him "The Greater Crim"). ProjeKct Two was the first such subdivision (or "fractal", as he called it).

LIVE GROOVE is the place to start for all this "projeKct" nonsense. Although this trio recorded a studio album [PLANET GROOVE] before embarking on tour, they had not yet gained a sense of what they could or could not do. LIVE GROOVE is culled from their actual concerts, and comprises what they could actually do; further, it provided the template for what the later fractals might do (espcecially ProjeKcts 3 and 4) -- eventually determining the reformed King Crimson in 2000.

First off is the best rendition extant of a track called "Sustaynz", and it does what a lead-off track should do: establishing what we might expect from the band, and the album overall. It does this so well, in fact, that there is little reason to listen to the rest of the album, as it tends to sound like more of the same. This is misleading; upon careful repeat listening, we notice the subtle differences between the tracks.

Further, the importance of the ideas contained here is magnified by their influence on the later fractals. For my own part, I found P2 more accessible than the later ProjeKcts, and therefore a good point of entry. Listen to LIVE AT NORTHAMPTON for a better representation of how the band actually sounded on a given night, but listen to LIVE GROOVE first so you know what the program is.

2003 original review: The weakest of the "ProjecKt" releases, the execution seems speeded up at the wrong times, and too shrill at others, compared to Space Groove, my first exposure to the King Crimson fractals.

2005 review update: started listening to it again, would increase to 2.5 stars. Sus-tayn-Z, Deception..., and Live Groove probably the best and most focused. Still hard to digest the "Constructions" (tracks 2, 5 and 7), and the other comments above still hold.