| Artist: | King Crimson |
| Title: | The Night Watch |
| Label: | Discipline Global Mobile DGM97072 |
| Length(s): | 40+42 minutes |
| Year(s) of release: | 1997 |
| Month of review: | 11/1997 |
| 1) | Easy Money | 6.15 |
| 2) | Lament | 4.14 |
| 3) | Book Of Saturday | 4.09 |
| 4) | Fracture | 11.28 |
| 5) | The Night Watch | 5.28 |
| 6) | Improv: Starless And Bible Black | 9.13 |
Disc 2:
| 1) | Improv: Trio | 6.09 |
| 2) | Exiles | 6.38 |
| 3) | Improv: The Fright Watch | 6.03 |
| 4) | The Talking Drum | 6.35 |
| 5) | Larks' Tongus In Aspic (Part 2) | 7.51 |
| 6) | 21st Century Schizoid Man | 10.30 |
and 107 MB of extra CD rom material to play with, making you familiar with some of the other DGM releases.
From the first plodding tones of Easy Money, which in any other arrangements would be a rather simple ditty, but as always KC lends it the strength it needs. The sad Lament builds up nicely from a low singing part to a slightly hectic ending. The next song is like Easy Money one that Wetton still plays solo, although often acoustic. The melody is good making it stand up being played in this way and in fact the version played here is quite soft as well. After quite a lengthy talk from Fripp Fracture is played. This is a thoroughly alarming track and typical of King Crimson in these days I should say, and it might even be the reason that the band opens with the more accessible tunes. This tune is such a powerful one with a strong basspresence, a strong theme running throughout the track and mellotron, strange noises throughout. After the melancholy Nightwatch we come to the next improvisation which is Starless and Bible Black, the title track of the, at this point, not yet materialized album. In fact this version is the blueprint for the album version (also holds for Fracture and Trio).
The next CD starts with Trio, yai (yet another improvisation). It is a sad tune without percussion and mostly violin and mellotron. After this rather quiet track Exiles enjoys a fuller mellotron and violin sound and percussion is very much back in the picture. The song has a rolling, longing quality to it and sounds at time almost improvised.
The Fright Watch should be called exactly that: the song is scary with high squeaky and dark dreamy sounds and later on load basswork and distorted guitar.
The Talking Drum enjoys like many of the tracks a slow build up, but in the end turns out to be a chaotic, noisy Arabic sounding track (due to the violin). Then the menacing Larks Tongues in Aspic part 2 takes to the stage and again the repetitive quality of the band is shown, repetition as always to build up tension.
The album and concert close with the anthemic 21st Century Schizoid Man, the only track not culled from Starles and Bible Black or Larks Tongues in Aspic. Concentrated chaos build around that one classic riff with the musicians playing seemingly if they're the only one on stage, but still managing to
The booklet contains lots of anekdotes of Robert Fripp on the period and irony is not strange to him, we can again remark. As always the booklet is nicely done and contains a small wealth of information.