Customer Reviews

In the Wake of Poseidon

5 star:		(15)
4 star:		(17)
3 star:		(13)
2 star:		(4)
1 star:		(2)

 

 

Curious album, this. Listeners and critics disagree about King Crimson's second offering. Many call it a sub-standard copy of debut, Court of the Crimson King (1969); others, erm, didn't.
There are admittedly quite a lot of similarities between the tw o, both musically and stylistically. In fact each song on Court... has a sort of sibling on In The Wake of Poseidon, though I cant possibly imagine why that should be seen as formulaic music making.
For King Crimson beginners, this particular incarnat ion of the group (Lake, McDonald, Giles, Fripp) was no-holds-barred, meat-and-potatoes progressive rock plain and simple: storybook lyrics, pompous orchestrations, classical influences and - just discernible - a smidgen of late 60s psy chadelia. Oh, and a lot of Mellotron. I love it. Most importantly the songwriting is for the most part, spot on. Cat Food and Cadence and Cascade are superb, while the title track is, like its counterpart Court of the Crimson King, a glorious piece of work (they REALLY don't make them like that anymore). It's Side 2 which taxes some listeners' patience to breaking point. An instrumental 5-part epic track the Devil's Triangle is modelled on the theme from Holst's Planets (Mars), and it rocks big-time. A great, dark, brooding drama depicting scenes of a scale limited only by your imagination. And theres quiet, gentle bits, too, to restore sanity and give you the chance to wipe the sweat and froth from your anguished, contorted features.
To sum up, Wake of Poseidon may not have had the commercial impact of its predecessor but its an album with bucketloads of personality and ye-olde-curiosity-shoppe charm. The musics quite good, too..

Following in the footsteps of King Crimson's acclaimed debut, "In the Wake of Poseidon" is often vastly overshadowed by its revolutionary predecessor. All too often criticized and degraded for sounding too much like Crimson's preceding effort, "In the Wake of Poseidon" was never really given a fair chance to be judged on its own terms. Now that the then fresh impact of "In the Court of the Crimson King" is decades behind us, it's a wonder that "In the Wake of Poseidon" was not better received. When listening to it now, the album actually holds up significantly better in comparison to Crim's rather half-hearted debut. While "In the Court of the Crimson King" seemed to lack focus and meander far too much, Robert Fripp's almost full control of the band for its second outing adds cohesiveness and conciseness to the CD making for a much stronger, complete statement. Even though the song structures of the two CDs may be strikingly similar at times, "Pictures of a City" is strongly reminiscent of "21st Century Schizoid Man" and the title track sounds like a not so distant cousin of "Epitaph", Fripp's solo guidance and individual thought process allows the album to follow a much more linear series of events that creates a distinctly climactic atmosphere throughout the album and provides a definite overall focus or theme that was badly lacking from the band's previous effort. Gaining intensity with every track, the raw tensions and emotions are held together by transitional "peace" interludes and as the album builds its velocity and momentum it finally climaxes with the manic string piece "The Devil's Triangle". Every song encapsulates a wide range of evocative imagery and flowing, crescendos and decrescendos enough to make each one a detailed, full standalone idea that not only aids the creation of the album as a whole, but stands as being more developed individually than past works as well. That is where the seeming true goal of "In the Wake of Poseidon" can be found. Whether it was due to something as complex as Fripp's almost fastidious drive to achieve perfection in his work or simply a desire to finish what the band had begun, "In the Wake of Poseidon" was not a copy of the first album but a completion of it. Many of the ideas presented on "In the Court of the Crimson King" seemed half finished or held back but when these same ideas were taken and fleshed out and fully developed, they turned into the CD that should've been King Crimson's proper debut to begin with. Although "In the Wake of Poseidon" didn't necessarily break any new ground for King Crimson, I think it is almost unquestionably a stronger album than the CD it draws upon and the consistently high song quality should really be more than enough to warrant one's attention.

This album is sort of a younger brother to "In the Court of the Crimson King". The cover is pretty cool, too! Although I liked their 1st album better, I think this is a great album. As for Philip Welsh and Ivan Mufti who left negative reviews, they probably would prefer listening to more "talented musicians" like Marilyn Manson and the Spice Girls! (That was sarcasm, folks!)

Side 1 starts with the Peace theme and segues into "Pictures of a City", which sounds like the kid brother of "Schizoid" with its loud guitars and brassy sax! "Cadence and Cascade" sounds like "I Talk to the Wind" (although it could've used Greg Lake again). The title track sounds like "Epitath" with its mellotron and the simmilar melody (Em-D-C-B).

Side 2 is where this album takes a life of its own, with the very pretty "Peace" (a 2nd version- an acoustic guitar piece) followed by the lyrically witty and wry and musically rocking "Cat Food". "The Devil's Triangle" is bizarre and eerie (with a recording of the title track of "In the Court of the Crimson King" thrown in for good measure!). Fianlly, the album ends hopefully with a final reprise of "Peace".

Pictures of a City is truly fantastic (it's worth getting the CD just for this song)! But there is more: In the Wake of Poseidon is majestic and beautiful and the lyrics are profound and totally up-to-date. There is a nocturnal feeling about this album, as the cover suggests. Holst's Mars, the Bringer of War: I find the King Crimson arrangement way more interesting than that of the E L & P, several years later. Cat Food: really funny song, Greg Lake & Pete Sienfield score here! The Peace themes are cute, I like the instrumental one. Cadence and Cascade: quiet ballad, pleasant to listen to, although not quite memorable. But the album overall is: The fact that In Court came first should not make any difference. And personally, I like Pictures of the City much better than 21st Century Schizoid Man.

That's how I first heard King Crimson's sound described back in the early 70s. I think it's a good description. I'm most partial to this album because it was the first one I bought. Most Amazon buyers are kind to it but the 'expert' reviewers seem to think it is somehow a pale imitation of the first album. I like to see it as simply a continuation of the first. If you like Court you will certainly find much to enjoy here. Yes the sound is similar on many of the songs. Rather than see that as negative I think it just doubles the pleasure. Fripp has never done any two of his other projects quite the same. The beginning of it all is a special treat for those of us who like the earliest version the best.

I didn't know what to expect when I purchased IN THE WAKE OF POSEIDON a couple of years ago. What I heard was their debut album's companion piece, much the way Genesis' WIND AND WUTHERING is the companion piece to A TRICK OF THE TAIL. What breaks the stride of this CD are the short "Peace" interludes. "Pictures of A City" is the slightly softer younger brother to "Schizoid Man". "Cadence And Cascade" is Crimson at its prettiest, deapite Gordon Haskell's obvious nervousness. Greg Lake turns up the volume for "Cat Food", while sounding quite funereal on the title song. "Devil's Triangle" is a bizarre take on Holst, with some of their own work thrown in. This album is NOT a carbon copy of the previous one, as some would make it out to be!

....as it's said to be like "In The Court Of The Crimson King", King Crimson's debut album. There are some similarities: the blending of fiery, jazz-rock numbers counterbalanced by smooth, r&b influenced tracks. On the whole, this album seems to carry more diversity than the debut does. It starts with the trippy, vocal experimentation of Peace (A Beginning), which is followed by the manic, fiery jazz-rock of Pictures Of A City. This has been compared to 21st Century Schizoid Man. It features that same sound effect, what I might describe as an ambulance alarm set on fire, I don't know if it's Robert Fripp's guitar or the sax producing it (you'll know what I'm talking about when you hear the track). Cadence And Cascade is an ethereal r&b/rock tune that's been compared to I Talk To The Wind (you know...the track that sounds as if The Everly Brothers were singing a song whose lyrics were written by Black Sabbath? A "Dream...Dream...Dream-y" concept unto itself). This features some of Robert Fripp's melodic and tasteful guitar playing. The vocals are very beautiful as well. In The Wake Of Poseidon (often compared to Epitath) is probably my personal favorite on here. An ingratiating mix of r&b, psychedelia and symphonic rock, combined with impassioned vocals makes this arguably the standout amongst many greats. Peace (A Theme) is a melodious guitar instrumental that prepares you for the manic, jazz/funk rock of Cat Food, which features absurd and silly lyrics of a Zappa-esque nature. The Devil's Triangle, like ELP's Abbadon's Bolero (see Trilogy), is a dark, chaotic, sci-fi/cinematic instrumental. Listen for a section from The Court Of The Crimson King (title track from debut) at the very end of this song. The album closes with Peace (An End), which features sad vocal delivery from Greg Lake. Sad, as in this was Greg's very last vocal performance with Crimson, as he would join the mighty ELP. Overall, this King Crimson album deserves to be owned, and if approached without thought of the debut, can be considered a classic.

This is _almost_ as good as "Court of the". It isn't a progression, more a restatement of similar themes. And the album has an extremely similar structure to the first album.

Side one starts with an abrasive hard-edged number (Pictures of a city), followed by a ballad, (Cadence and Cascade) followed by a big classically-influenced number with an "epic" feel (In the Wake of").

"Pictures" and "Poseidon" aren't quite as good as their opposite numbers on the first album: "Schizoid Man" and "Epitaph" respectively. But hell, "Schizoid Man" and "Epitaph" are two of the most majestically powerful pieces of music ever assembled by a group rather than written by an individual composer. A song can be not quite as great as King Crimson's absolute peaks, and still be pretty extremely wonderful and good. These are still great, powerful pieces.

The ballad "Cascade" is actually an improvement on "I talk to the wind" from "Court of the". And Gordon Haskell sings okay, though it's a damn shame Greg Lake didn't stay to do that one last song. (It's also a damn shame he left at all, of course. The original King Crimson line-up is one of the unique assemblages of talent in musical history, and it's a hell of a pity they made only one album, the complete and total idiots and pillocks. This is the last album to contain most of that line-up.)

On the other side "Cat Food" is a great song; funny but not at all a throw-away. Strong tune, strong playing, good sarcastic vocal from Greg Lake. And I like Pete Sinfield's lyrics best when he's being a bit nasty (therefore his best stuff is on "Lizard").

And "The Devil's Triangle" has its moments. It's awesome acid music, of course. But acid-influenced music appreciation is to music appreciation what acid-influenced housepainting is to housepainting. If you see what I mean. I think I preferred the version of "Mars" from Holst's "The Planets" suite that they did live. The original line-up's live act is captured in appalling sound in the "Epitaph" release. Live, they did "Mars" as a shortish simple THRASH: a bunch of boys playing "What's the maximum possible amount of noise we can make in the minimal possible time?" Which is fun in small doses.

That approach gets better results than the longer version on "Poseidon". Though there's some good keyboard stuff from Keith Tippet in the background of the "Poseidon" version, which should be brought forward in any remixed version.

The "Peace" theme at the beginning and end has some good acoustic guitar, which I think owes something to a Bach piece, but I don't care for it all that much.

So it's a great album; it'd be the best album, an all-time classic, if it was by almost any other band, but since it's the extraordinary King Crimson it comes close to the top of the second rank. (That's "Court of", "Larks' Tongues" and "Red" in the first rank, and "Poseidon", "Lizard" and "Starless" in the second rank, coming in just behind.)

No-one who likes "Court of" should do without this album. Even the second-best Crimson is still vastly better than most band's best. Essential listening.

And dated?! 16-year olds making music now think this stuff is awesome, and they're dead right, of course. In some ways it's improved with age, because it's clearer now just what original, creative and downright tricky, clever stuff this was and is.

Laon

Well, if nothing else this second Crimson album proves that if something works, fixing it until it breaks is a worthy end. The first half of POSEIDON is a somewhat less apocolyptic reiteration of IN THE COURT OF THE CRIMSON KING's first half, and it's probably only a matter of which you hear first as to which you will prefer. Me, I prefer COURT if for no other reason than up to its release in 1969 there simply was nothing like it, anywhere, ever (including Barry Godber's stunning cover), so that by the time POSEIDON appeared a year later its effect was mitigated by the first LP's already being there. The second half of POSEIDON, however, is a different story altogether. The extended coda to 'Moonchild' nothwithstanding, there was little humor to be found in COURT. POSEIDON's second half, though, is a veritable laff riot. Keith Tippett's tinkly piano solos on 'Cat Food' (echoed three years later in Mick Garson's beautiful solo on Bowie's 'Alladin Sane') are even more hilarious than my cat and virtually define the already-amusing song. And the lengthy, bass-heavy, Mellotron-laden 'The Devil's Triangle', though beginning coyly enough, gets so heated up as it plods maniacally along that a chorus of 'In The Court Of The Crimson King' manages to sneak in a ghoulish and gleeful appearance toward the bubbly conclusion. A nagging question, though: How come Fripp decided not to include 'Groon', the B-side to the original single release of 'Cat Food', on this reissue? It was pretty funny too, you know.

Until now (07/2002), I own three King Crimson records: In The Court Of The Crimson King, In The Wake Of Poseidon and Starless & Bible Black. I prefer the Red era line-up, with John Wetton singing. But, regardless he isn't here In The Wake Of Poseidon, I must say that Greg Lake does a really great job too. This is my favourite one yet. It doesn't compare either to the classical In The Court.., but it has something more, be it in the lyrics or in the melodies, offering something new. It includes the awesome "Pictures of a City", who mixes guitar combined with a good portion of sax and Lake's psychedelic manner of singing. Besides that, the album offers a rock song in the way Crimso play at "Cat Food" (Also released as a single) and the frightening instrumental "The Devil Triangle" (Foremost known as "Mars"), whom instruments are some mellotron and drums only.
Gordon Haskell surprises singing in "Cadence And Cascade", not to mention that he would follow singing in the whole Islands album too.

It's really tough to classify this as King Crimson's best, but if not possible, all I can say is that it is a great piece of a work from the best band of all times. And I really mean it.