S/D: King Crimson-Related Prog Groups

The King Crimson: Classic Or Dud thread and discussion about the various ProjeKcts is making me think: what are some of the more interesting offshoots? After all, there is a pretty wide circle of groups and records that have emerged over the last 15 years or so. And many of them tour a ton, like:

Stick Men (Tony Levin/Pat Mastelotto group)
Tuner (Pat Mastelotto duo w touch guitarist Markus Reuter)
TU (Trey Gunn/Mastelotto group)
KTU (Expanded above)
B.L.U.E (Bruford/Levin jazz-oriented group)
Security Project (Trey Gunn's Peter Gabriel-oriented quasi-tribute band)
Travis Fripp (Fripp soundscapes duo with wind player, Theo Travis)

There's also groups that specialize in Crimson material:
Crimson ProjeKct (Belew-led Crimson group)
Crimson Jazz Trio (Ian Wallace-led jazz group)

And there are also one-off records like Rieflin/Fripp/Gunn's Repercussions of Angelic Behavior album.

As many of these groups have inherited Fripp's disdain for streaming services, I have only heard select recordings. Some of it is kind of a fun guilty pleasure for me, such as this Stick groove on the live album by B.L.U.E:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sYpBKjN2zHc&app=desktop

Who and what else is worth hearing? What of it is terrible? Who is worth point $15 to see live?

i like ktu but only because i enjoy the accordion. the rest are... eh. there's so many different kinds of groups of shred-heavy instrumental prog and you know they all tend to blur together for me after a while.

A lot of them do, tho not all of them are really shreddy. The TUNER MÜÜT record is kind of interesting – drums, soundscapes and touch guitar, with a few overdubbed doses of Toyah and other prog luminaries dropped in. Kind of sinewy, kind of groovy, kind of sample/spacey. Not bad.

Rieflin/Fripp/Gunn

It's not a one-off, that was the second album. The first was "Birth of a Giant," and it's great.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R5Rx34DJ7XA

Would also suggest the truly awesome Sylvian/Fripp album, which has Fripp, Gunn, Pat. And Michael Brook live!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VmybBX-Go2s

I like some of the Bruford Levin material, was going to embed the track "deeper blue" but in searching for it I accidentally discovered a completely straight cover of pink floyd's "money" performed by bruford, levin, and edgar winter (BLW?) and now I feel conflicted.

the travis/fripp albums are really nice.

the crimson projeckt live stuff is excellent, if you are craving to hear the 80's work again

I like the jazz trio albums a lot.

Holy crap, talk about a rabbit hole. Skimming this thread, I'd never heard of (or didn't remember hearing of) the Security Project, that Gabriel tribute band that features not just Gunn but also drummer Jerry Marotta, who Gabriel worked regularly with from 1980-1986 or so. So I was watching some interview with Marotta when I learned that that's him in this band, responsible for one of the most infamously bad album covers of all time:
http://wac.450f.edgecastcdn.net/80450F/kool1017.com/files/2013/06/orleans-628x630.jpg
I think Marotta is second from the left.

I skipped going to see the Security project the other week, although some clips I heard are convincing, it seems a shame for these guys to be doing a slavish tribute act ala the Musical Box. I'd rather just see them playing the songs with their own style and without a soundalike.

Holy crap, talk about a rabbit hole.

Yep. This is my point. I think of these bands less as album bands and more things that would be fun to see in concert (since I go to shows these days virtually never). I live just outside Boston and the Natick Center for the Performing Arts seems to host all of them at one time or another.

My biggest fear is that all this music is going to make me want to start playing a Touch Guitar and looking like this:

http://bohlen-pierce-conference.org/wp-content/uploads/2010/01/sword_with_BP_Guitar.jpg

That said, I'm listening a bit to Markus Reuter, who's the Touch Guitarist in a lot of these bands and I'm enjoying it. He's kind of an amalgam of all these guys – part noise, part Soundscapes, part noodly solos.

_Rieflin/Fripp/Gunn_

It's not a one-off, that was the second album. The first was "Birth of a Giant," and it's great.

Doesn't that one have vocals and guests tho? It sounded pretty different than how RoA has been described to me.

Yeah, Rieflin sings, like Bowie/Sylvian.
But Fripp is super prominent throughout.

all the markus reuter stuff I've listened to is great. certainly a worthy stand in for fripp, sonically; if fripp ever kicks it and they decided to continue on I'd heartily endorse crimson projeckts with him involved.

i totally want a touch guitar but yes, same fear about the hairstyle choices. also i think gunn usually wears a kilt.

Reuter almost pulls it off with his Germanic eyewear and excellent haircut. And Levin sort of looks like a hobgoblin anyway with his drumstick fingers and whatnot. But there's something profoundly uncool about tap guitar instruments like Touch Guitar and Chapman Stick in the hands of just about every other musician.

I mean, I know Trey Gunn's the instructor and all, but it's also kind of funny how everyone who plays these things sounds (and looks) like a junior member of Guitar Craft:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q1_VuiMYxtU

https://i.ytimg.com/vi/FE9o0kT11Xw/maxresdefault.jpg

http://static1.squarespace.com/static/50afe5dbe4b01c11f0ebf4b8/50afe5dbe4b01c11f0ebf4be/50afebade4b05036d3ab4b03/1353706414129/randystrom1.jpg

https://i.ytimg.com/vi/Gc4lL1JTztg/hqdefault.jpg

https://i.ytimg.com/vi/opX5PtGy5XQ/maxresdefault.jpg

http://threeofaperfectpair.com

Yes, the prog camp! I just found out about that a few weeks ago and, man. I mean, this could be you, Josh:

http://static1.squarespace.com/static/5259b212e4b018d72381726e/525ac6f7e4b030e5f06f44a4/525ac707e4b06e05e7cdd9e5/1381680907166/Camp_2.jpg

(BTW, if I had money to just throw around and no familial responsibilities, I would totally go to this for a week -- I mean, campfire songs in 17/8, toasting marshmallows on Tony Levin's drumstick fingers ... that's a once-in-a-lifetime chance right here)

Love Rieflin, but I'm pretty sure I could pull off most of what he did during the most recent KC tour, especially with a week of summer camp jamming under my belt!

he's out as drummer for the time being I think too, correct?

Yes, not entirely clear why.

Apropos of nothing: my high school guidance counselor was an assistant engineer on that Orleans record.

Re. Rieflin, has anyone heard Slow Music Project? I mean, this is some kinda lineup:

Peter Buck
Robert Fripp
Bill Rieflin
Hector Zazou
Matt Chamberlain
Fred Chalenor

i heard it once. it was really boring.

Not prog but I find it hard to pass up opportunities to seriously rep for an album that is very important to me that no one else in the world seems to rate at all... Skip this post unless you feel like reading something pitched at the speed of uncontrollable enthusiasm.

When I was just out of high school about 14 years ago I particularly liked the percussion work found in the album Lark's Tongues in Aspic , so much that I decided to purchase a Jamie Muir album. My reaction to that album was like -- who is this guy and why do I like this so much!? I had a very limited musical education up to that point. Jamie Muir kind of kicked off an obsession with music that sounds unique and has it's own sonic language. Inimitable things!

The Music Improvisation Company albums weren't in print or I couldn't find them or something and I ended up ordering the Jamie Muir & Derek Bailey Dart Drug album... in short, as I said this is not prog at all, it's a free improv percussion album, the most extreme and isolated and inaccessible genre niche in the entire vast jazz world as far as I can tell. The music (some might say "music") found therein consists of a lot of zen-like negative space emptiness punctuated by waves of sensitive and colorful and mostly pitch-less (or at least harmony-less) percussion work accompanied by less colorful but no less-tuneless electric guitar-generated percussives. Caveat Emptor!!!

Every portable percussive sound imaginable, just about, is heard over the course of 4 carefully modulated & extremely dynamic improvised arrhythmic performances. Jamie Muir seems to have had an impressive arsenal of instruments indeed, consisting of what I'm sure is no less than every single possible sound he could collect and/or invent. For all the sounds heard in Lark's Tongues like rattling chains and bags of leaves and such, there are maybe 3x as many unique timbres and colors to be discovered here. This album was recorded in 1981, I think, as opposed to the former's 1973. A lot of metallic sounds, sometimes bowed, sometimes struck and things like that. There are train whistles and every variety of duck/bird call. Whirring wind sounds. Creaks and drum stick clatter. Pitter patter punctuated by one or two high voltage piercing guitar stabs. The busiest part of the albums consists of a regular parade of unexpected sounds passing across and through time, an unchained-rhythm cornucopia of strange sounds and familiar sounds and WTF? sounds.

Incidentally, time seems to almost not exist in this sound world, so disembodied is it all. Still it hangs together and reads like a narrative. The most marvelous thing is perhaps that this particular album which should be boring never does actually bore me, the players are so very in the moment and if you can discipline yourself to listen closely the album sometimes even reveals itself to be unusually fun & even funny music! Not always, though. There is a lot of harshness and grit, too, the full frequency spectrum is represented in some capacity, including some mysterious deep bass resonances (didgeridoo? detuned guitar string?)

Muir is the foundation and driving force of Dart Drug, his performance is very energetic and dexterous at the times when the duo reach their occasional climaxes, and tastefully moderate and sporadic in the contrasting sections. It seems to me spiritually cast from the same mold as his KC work, only isolated and given free reign without any kind of restrictions or obligations. Sometimes sparse, sometimes manically and often magically busy. My favorite sound of the album must be this kind of whirligig thing that he spins and it makes all sorts of crazy clanging bell sounds and creates a sort of beautiful rude clangor, and whilest spinning this he's scattering other percussive effects all over the soundscape very generously with his free limbs (or maybe Bailey puts down the guitar sometimes and joins in on the allsorts? Hard to say!)

And then aside from Muir's more prominent role in the duo, we have Derek Baily, who as mentioned above provides equally obtuse and inventive and often challenging percussive guitar attacks. I know him only by reputation mostly, he seems to be the acknowledged bloody-minded high priest of what Bill Bruford calls "squeak-bump" music in his autobio. I never did decide how I felt about Bailey as an artist, he's a character if nothing else and I wouldn't want to live in a world where there wasn't at some point an ex-jazz guy dedicated to this kind of thing! He fits in with Muir very, very well. They were both in the Music Improvisation Group together, pre-KC I think, and they are clearly on the same page. Overall Bailey is in a subdued supporting role, offering up a running sortakinda Greek chorus commentary on Muir's whirlwind clacking and rustling and skittering and clanging and clipslopping. His guitar tone is very good, sharp and trebley and responsive to nuance. He has a few moments of prominence but mostly he seems to be very much content to get out of Muirs way!!! Which is probably wise, less is more with this kind of thing, no?

Shortly afterwards I ended up absorbing and moving on from most prog, including KC and Lark's Tongues is no longer of much interest, despite the fact I rate it highly still, but Dart Drug totally blew my fucking mind and it still transports me back to that state of being where there is no horizon and anything can and probably will happen. That there aren't just a few ways to make good music, there are infinite ways.

The album probably can't possibly have the same effect on most listeners who aren't 19 and hungry for radical aesthetic experiences and, fingers crossed, revelations; it was just that this was my first exposure to reallllllly-way-out-there music lacking like musical things like melodies and back-beats and the damn thing single-handedly and memorably gave me a certain special hunger for new sounds after a lifetime of pop music and so on and so forth. I'll always have time for it.

So, worth a close listen if one rates Lark's Tongues in Aspic and the few very hazy live albums from that era!!! There are riches in Dart Drug even though it's as chaotic and self-indulgent and relentlessly unmusical (but still somehow paradoxically beautiful) as any music I have ever heard, and I've spent a lot of time looking for similarly colorful and unique albums since! Never did hear any other Jamie Muir stuff but someday I'll get there. Was always content with this one album which seems to be a very mature statement, an album that is for people who just plain love sounds of all kinds.

Sorry if anyone read all this, I kind of just felt like writing this morning and this is a favorite subject! The topic of KC alumnae is good and worth digging into!

i _love_ hearing other people's uncontrollable enthusiasm. i find it infectious. these days my biggest criterion for listening to an album is how much somebody else really, really loves it, and can tell me how much they love it.

Yep, agreed. Plus, Dart Drug is awesome.

Your post also makes me think about how Muir is an incredibly important figure in Crimson history. One of the things that I've noticed as I've explored the 2000s era of KC (and read about) is that there is this interesting master/pupil thing that happens with the Crimson drum chair -- beginning with the 1972-74 band, they have a drummer proper (in this case, Bruford, coming off his Yes experience) and a percussionist (Muir) whose role it to push the limits of experimentation (as heard on the Larks' Tongues box). After a period, the percussionist then leaves the group (to become a monk, supposedly, in Muir's case) and the "drummer" (Bruford), having absorbed the lessons of the master and folds them into his own playing, (which can be heard on the massive Starless box.

That's a great story in and of itself ... but it's precisely what happens when the band reforms in 1994, when Bruford served as the percussion master with his metric modulations and Simmons drum pads while Mastelotto, the loud tubthumper from his days playing stadiums, held down the beat. Then, when Bruford leaves the double trio, Mastelotto becomes this insane electronic percussionist -- something that was truly new in the band history. Mastelotto is involved in a ton of these projects mentioned upthread -- and brings that same exploratory spirit to those.

It's really cool -- and frankly, it all started with Muir and his fur-wearing, blood capsule-spitting, thumb piano playing insanity.

Funny that "Drug Dart" was brought up. Way back when when I first got into Crimson and particularly the (very brief) Muir era I remember trying to find anything else with Muir on it, and iirc "Drug Dart" was pretty much it!

Pat was totally playing the Muir part the last time I saw KC, with Gavin being Bruford and Rieflin ... man, Rieflin was superfluous, I don't get it.

Fripp in collaboration with wife, Toyah Wilcox:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=64VGyoIyBgc

New free recording from Markus Reuter with Tony Geballe (early Guitar Craft dude) and some other folks on Bandcamp:

http://iapetus-store.com/album/how-things-turned-out

Pretty good so far. There's a bunch of other free Reuter up there as well.

i listened to all those reuter releases a few months ago; all pretty good!