Discipline - King Crimson

Provenance: I volunteered at Reading Festival in 2003 (I realise you're all clamouring to know whether I saw Sum 41 - the answer is yes), and my friend Simon, with whom I was camping (next to members of Linkin Park's extended entourage, some guys from the Datsuns and a former Deep Purple roadie) told me about a record fair that was taking place in the leisure centre next to the festival site.

Desperate to get away from the wretched swine who hemmed me in day and night, I readily agreed with Simon's suggestion to slip away for an hour or two.

I hadn't intended on buying anything, but that's been the perennial bleat I've made every time I've exited from a music shop or bookstore laden with purchases. Anyway, I kept my 'discipline' here, and bought a single album - King Crimson's Discipline(!), influenced jointly by my dad owning In the Court of the Crimson King and having seen the Discipline line-up on a Fridays rerun. They sounded pretty cool, and they had an odd looking fellow playing a Chapman stick. Sold!

Review: When I was growing up in Bournemouth it had a reputation as a place to go once you've given up on life; later on, thanks to the proliferation of clubs with names like Wiggle, Bliss and Toko, weekends in the town became one long bacchanal, if such revels solely consisted of guys in Ted Bakers getting in paggas at taxi ranks and driving modded hatchbacks very slowly around the 'Westover circuit'.

What was never apparent about Bournemouth in those days was its status as an incubator for many a prog-rock superstar. John Wetton (King Crimson, Asia), Greg Lake (Emerson Lake and Palmer) and Robert Fripp (King Crimson) all met each other at Bournemouth College, whilst the Giles brothers (King Crimson) were also local. During my late teens, quite a few then-current / former members of Hawkwind (honestly, they probably couldn't tell you whether they were in the group or not) used to hang around a pub I would frequent, and my mate Max and I would receive semi-regular thrashings on the pool table from these erstwhile psychonauts.

This should mean nothing when it comes to a sober appraisal of Discipline, but my take on their output is tempered with a small but significant - and no doubt idiotic - dose of hometown pride. We had sticky clubs pumping out DJ Otzi megamixes, a shite football team and our most famous residents were Max Bygraves and Jimmy Savile. King Crimson, at the very least, had a degree of credibility, even a touch of mystery - bandleader Fripp was a retiring, elusive presence, and their version of prog left no room for flummery or whimsy. To those of us of sound mind, pop music can't really hurt you, but for my money King Crimson's Red is about as unsettling and scary as the genre can get. Cool!

But Discipline is not Red. This is King Crimson meets Talking Heads, heavily influenced by the new wave and self-consciously arty. However, Robert Fripp is undoubtedly one of the more cerebral guitar slingers out there, and for Discipline he recruited other guys who weren't exactly slouches in the brains department either - Adrian Belew (guitar, vocals), Tony Levin (bass, Chapman stick) and the incomparable Bill Bruford on drums (the single holdover from King Crimson's previous studio album, the aforementioned Red). This adds up to an arch, clever-clever group of musos with the chops to pull off some complex ideas.

Two things at the outset - first, these guys can't sound convincingly playful. Not even wacky old Adrian in his pink suits can escape the po-faced pomposity of some of the subjects that Crimson tackle. I'm not expecting the kind of winking bawdiness that AC/DC do from King fucking Crimson, but even lighter themes are turned into somewhat byzantine word-and-rhythm games. I don't think anyone has ever referred to King Crimson - any line-up of King Crimson - as 'the lads'. The second point, slightly adjacent to the first, is that everything on Discipline is highly technical, highly strung and very buttoned up. Nothing on Discipline sounds at all organic (probably by design, given the name), so one has to be in a certain frame of mind to enjoy it. This isn't music to relax to - quite the opposite - it's tense, itchy, uncomfortable. This latter issue isn't necessarily a criticism.

In fact, when it comes together, Discipline is a marvel. For all that they've sacrificed any notions of looseness or vibe for technical ecstasy, the personnel involved mean that the level of playing is simply dazzling. Bruford is the standout for me, conjuring up polyrhythmic patterns of rare power and drive. I reckon an album solely of Bruford's contributions would be quite listenable. The word genius is tossed around a lot when a simple 'very good' would do, but he's worthy of the mantle.

Elsewhere, the strength in Discipline lies in the sheer range of weird and wonderful sounds the rest of the band coax from their instruments. For example, on opener 'Elephant Talk', some clever sod has got their guitar sounding like a pachyderm's trumpeting; and instrumental 'The Sheltering Sky' features a slew of guitars that have been pushed to their outer limits. Here, the effect is sometimes shrill and uncanny - but on the gorgeous, aching 'Matte Kudasai', the weeping violin effect is mesmerising, elevating an already plangent tune to greater depths of sensibility.

And where necessary, in between the Afrobeat guitars and paradiddles, King Crimson can still muster up a mighty roar. The first instance that the heavily overdriven guitar kicks in during the chorus of 'Thela Hun Ginjeet' is a startling, even overwhelming moment - so all-consuming is the sound that it knocks the wind out of the other instrumentation and almost takes on a physical dimension. Mostly the jump scares are absent, though it really doesn't matter whilst the arrangements ping and whizz around in a dizzying, whirling, triumphal demonstration of what happens when pure ability is harnessed to a singular, iron will. Discipline is whip-smart, deadly serious, a little pretentious - and perversely, a lot of fun.

Oh, and Blur were absolute pony at that year's Reading Festival. I gave up and went to watch Billy Bragg instead.

Damnation - Opeth

Provenance: I'm just back from a trip to Romania to attend the marriage of my old friend Joe to the lovely Elena. Joe's one of a group of guys who I've all known since the age of 11, and gradually became pals through a shared love of music. At one time or another we've all played with each other's bands and to this day remain tight as a group of people. It's really rather wonderful.

As is customary for any group that bond over music, recommendations fly back and forth, and one I was happy to catch was Opeth. So now, as I reflect upon the sumptuary and sublimity of the Carpathian landscape (Transylvania is a beautiful place), lately surroundings, it seems fitting that my first review upon returning home is one of Opeth's most dreamlike and ethereal collections to date.

Review: Well, I've already given the game away by labelling Damnation 'dreamlike' and 'ethereal'. Let me begin by saying that once upon a time, these would not be words readily associated with Opeth. The band - which continues to be led by the multi-talented Mikael Akerfeldt - began life as a progressive death metal outfit. However, since their 1995 debut Orchid, Akerfeldt has gradually allowed his love of classic prog rock to shine through, with 2003's Damnation representing a culmination of sorts; it was both the most nakedly prog album Opeth had put out to date, and also their most mellow.

Gone, then, are the death growls of pure death metal; in their stead is a stately, sorrowful singing akin to that John Wetton contributed to King Crimson's Red. The King Crimson comparisons don't end there, either; again, Red is invoked with some of the guitar tones and the liberal use of Mellotron to produce the very particular note of mournful foreboding that characterises the album. Which is not to say that Damnation is some kind of sequel to Red; it is perhaps unsurprising that Porcupine Tree also spring to mind, given that Steven Wilson co-produces this album.

However, if it never quite reaches the levels of tension or intensity of Red (and let's face it, what does?), Damnation is very much a collection of uneasy moods, thanks to tricksy minor-key arrangements coupled with drumming that is itchy and imaginative, pulling the seams out of the music, both establishing and deleting a groove at the same time. There are songs here too; by which I mean Opeth write strong melodies throughout, twining them sinuously around the skeletal instrumentation.

It's about this time I feel I should digress a little, and state for the record that I'm fucking sick of music publications that act in amazement when unabashedly progressive bands can write a goddamn tune. From Yes to Caravan, Jethro Tull to Genesis, Steve Hillage to Kevin Ayers, prog has been chokka with superlatively hummable music, some of which just happens to be in 13/8. Of course, there are artists in the genre who chose to create more impressionistic music, or to privilege virtuosity over what one might describe as a certain pop sensibility, but prog has earned an undeserved reputation for masturbatory excess and self-indulgence. If we're talking jam bands - well, now you're onto something, brother...

There's precious little fat on Damnation. At times it can feel like a very quiet album, with a spectral piano refrain picked out, or a shivering, chiming guitar figures ringing out over a sparse, empty landscape of sound. It's not a stretch to say that some of this is utterly spellbinding - and when the Mellotron kicks in, one of the few full-bodied instruments in the mix, the effect is at once both startling and thrilling. The guitar work is woozy and beguiling, natural and harmonic minor scales lulling the listener into that weird, heavy-lidded moment between wakefulness and sleep. The last track, 'Weakness', signs off on the most hesitant and tentative note struck on the entirety of Damnation, bringing to a close an album that feels like it was conjured entirely of gauze and ghosts and fog.