King Crimson - Uncertain Times (2018)

Tonight we have a guest post from geofmcm, with his entry in the ever-popular "create your own 'new' RadKrim album" game. This involves making up an album from all the new music written, improvised by, or edited from improvisations by, the RadKrim lineup of King Crimson. Having three drummers in the band means that there are a number of tracks which are basically drum solos, and if they are given a title then they are a contender for the album, so we start with one of them, and 'Devil Dogs Of Tessellation Row' leads neatly into a demo of one of their new compositions, 'The Errors'. Following the interlude 'Interlude', we have the second drum piece, 'CatalytKc No 9', cross-fading into the live 'Hoodoo', which has some editing to shorten it and echo added to make it easier on the ears. That's followed by one of their more experimental pieces in 'Ahriman's Ceaseless Corruptions', and then we're back with a live take of 'Suitable Grounds For The Blues'. 'Cadenzas' is a unique addition to this album, as often in concert the band would follow 'Moodchild' with  Tony Levin, Robert Fripp and Jeremy Stacey all playing a 1:30 'Cadenza', each in turn, and Geof has taken three of these performances and blended them together into one piece, panning left, right and centre, and I then cross-faded that into the beginning of the highlight of the whole album, 'Radical Action Suite'. Finally I found a painting that seemed to fit the concept from Francesca Sundsten, who was the partner of band member Bill Reiflin, and who provided the artwork for a number of King Crimson albums, in particular the striking 'one-eyed man' on the cover of their 2016 release 'Radical Action (To Unseat The Hold Of Monkey Mind)'. Sundsten died in 2019, just a year before her partner Reiflin, and so this album is a tribute to both of them, as well as a reminder that King Crimson are still alive and well, and producing challenging music well into the 21st Century (Schizoid Man).   

Track listing

01 Devil Dogs Of Tessellation Row
02 The Errors
03 Interlude
04 CatalytiKc No. 9
05 Hoodoo
06 Ahriman's Ceaseless Corruptions
07 Suitable Grounds For The Blues
08 Cadenzas
09 Radical Action Suite