Review: King Crimson – Three Of A Perfect Pair (1984)

Three Of A Perfect Pair is King Crimson’s tenth studio album.

King Crimson’s new beginning in the early 80s was explosive. Discipline, released in 1981, introduced the band to a whole new musical grammar developed by Robert Fripp, based on the gamelan-like disciplined polyrhythmic interplay of two electric guitars circling around each other. The dream team assembled by Fripp, guitarist/vocalist Adrian Belew and the virtuoso rhythm section of Tony Levin (bass) and Bill Bruford (drums) seemed inspired by the new direction.

However, it was on the next album, Beat (1982), that the problems began. Fripp’s and Belew’s visions for the direction of music collided and sparks flew. Although Belew was as interested in experimental music as the other members of Crimson, he had a natural tendency to lean more towards pop. However, Belew found it very difficult to write songs within the rather austere framework created by Fripp. And that is what was expected of Belew. Belew’s job was to bring an approachable angle to Crimson. And at the same time, not to go too far. King Crimson almost fell apart as a result of this cross-drift around the time of the Beat sessions. Despite the challenges, Beat was an excellent album, even if it was not as seamless as its predecessor. Quite typically for prog bands, the problems within the band were never really addressed and the foursome just carried on, gritting their teeth.

King Crimson attempted to record a follow-up to Beat as early as January 1983, but two weeks of sessions were condemned as a dead end and the resulting material unsatisfactory. The recordings were cut short and the band split up. They returned to the studio in May, producing two rather experimental and angular tracks, ”Industry” and ”Dig Me”. In June, the sessions were interrupted again when work did not progress as expected. Bill Bruford was recording Music For Piano And Drums with Patrick Moraz and Belew had already finished his solo album Twang Bar King during the break.

Belew and Fripp got together to write the material in August and finally, in sessions in November, the album was completed. The original January sessions have since been published in a series of King Crimson archive releases under the title KCCC 21 – Champaign-Urbana Sessions, 1983 (2002). The Champaign-Urbana Sessions showcase a more experimental and casually raucous Crimson. Some of the embryos from those sessions ended up as further elaborations on the Three Of A Perfect Pair album, finally released in March 1984.

Read also: Review: King Crimson – Lizard (1970)

”The album presents two distinct sides of the band’s personality, which has caused at least as much confusion for the group as it has the public and the industry. The left side is accessible, the right side excessive.”

Robert Fripp

The album sides of Three Of A Perfect Pair have the unofficial names The Left Side and The Right Side. The Left Side on the A side is, according to Fripp, ”accessible” and The Right Side on the B side is ”excessive”.

It’s not quite as clear-cut as that, but it’s true that the A-side has more easily digestible material and the almost entirely instrumental B-side contains mostly more angular and experimental music.

The opening title track is a great song. It’s an exhilaratingly catchy and bright song that seamlessly blends Belew’s pop leanings with Fripp’s angular prog gamelan. The song is a real Belew bravura. Belew’s vocal track runs in one time signature, the guitar in another and he makes it all seem really effortless. Belew performed ”Three Of A Perfect Pair” solo at King Crimson gigs in the early 2000s, and the song also worked great as a one-man version. ”Three Of A Perfect Pair” is A-grade prog-pop.

One, one too many schizophrenic tendencies
Keeps it complicated (complicated)
Keeps it aggravated (aggravated)
And full of this hopelessness
Oh, what a perfect mess

The second track, the twitchy and crackling, ”Model Man” brings Belew’s vocals to the fore. The song is a little too reminiscent of a songs that could be found on almost any of Belew’s solo albums, although Levin’s booming bass and Bruford’s laconically bouncing drums do add a crimson flavour.

The third track ”Sleepless” is, along with ”Three Of A Perfect Pair”, the highlight of The Left Side. Thundering forward with menace and relentless drive, ”Sleepless” is an impressive song. Inspired and propelled by Tony Levin’s powerful funky bass pattern, the song was also remixed for the dance floor. So maybe someone was lucky enough to dance to King Crimson at a disco in 1984!

Unfortunately, the good boogie started by Sleepless doesn’t last long because if ”Model Man” was too typical a Belew song, the self-repeating and chorus-driven ”Man With An Open Heart” goes even further. ”Man With An Open Heart” is by far the album’s least impressive offering and feels a bit overlong despite its three-minute duration.

The Left Side closes with the instrumental ”Nuages (That Which Passes, Passes Like Clouds)”, which features guitar synthesizers and brings the band’s synthetic side to the fore. The sounds of this song are reminiscent of Pat Metheny’s music. Almost ambient and excitingly bubbly, ”Nuages” is a pleasant listen, but I doubt anyone would call it very memorable Crimson music.

Read also: Review: King Crimson – Larks’ Tongues in Aspic (1973)

The instrumental theme continues as The Right Side kicks off with an improvisation-based track that is considerably more intense than its predecessor. At seven minutes, ”Industry” is the longest track on the album and, as its name suggests, it has a very industrial sound. The whole quartet seems to breathe together on ”Industry” like a great mechanical machine that pops, whirs and bangs along in a subtly nightmarish way. The song builds tension in a similar way to the band’s ancient track ”The Devil’s Triangle” on In The Wake Of Poseidon (1970). Starting very low-key, the song gradually increases in intensity, adding more instruments and volume, taking centre stage with Fripp’s ominous electric guitar and Bruford’s wild but controlled electric drum rolls assaulting the soundstage. For me, ”Industry” is the absolute highlight of the album. Warr guitarist Markus Reuter and drummer Pat Mastelotto successfully covered the song under the Tuner name in the 2000s.

”Dig Me” is the only song on the b-side of the album with vocals. ”Dig Me”, which explores the soulfulness of a car that ended up in a junkyard, quite interestingly combines shrieking atonal sounds with a catchy melodic chorus. The song paces between these two extremes, almost derailing at times. And that’s always more interesting than playing it safe.

The penultimate track on the album, ”No Warning”, is probably entirely improvisational music, and it packs quite a violent and chaotic avant-garde punch, with Bruford in particular shining. But perhaps the band could have gone even further in their screeching.

The closing track returns to the complex world of ”Larks’ Tongues Aspic” in its third manifestation. Like its predecessors, this third part contains complex rhythms and fast electric guitar riffing from Fripp, but the whole remains a little light compared to the previous parts. Especially the fade-out is a rather incomprehensible solution and the 80’s sounds are not really convincing in this context. ”Larks’ Tongues in Aspic (Part III)” is good music, but there could have been more potential. King Crimson returned to the theme of ”Larks’ Tongues In Aspic” twice more in the 2000s, fortunately with better success.

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Three Of A Perfect Pair is a rather uneven album and King Crimson seem to get their A-game going properly only in a couple of songs. Robert Fripp’s interest in King Crimson must have been waning by this time. So he takes a back seat in many of the songs. After the Three Of A Perfect Pair tour (the tour was later released on the excellent concert album Absent Lovers) Fripp announced to the other musicians that King Crimson was no more. Pretty much exactly ten years later when the gauntlet had last been slammed down after the Red album.

The tragedy of King Crimson’s ”colour trilogy” of the early 80s is that the first part, Discipline, presented a radical, and astonishingly finished, vision, but the band never really knew how to build a natural follow-up. Instead of continuing deeper and deeper in the direction of the rock gamelani pioneered by Discipline, Beat took one step backwards. Unfortunately, Three Of A Perfect Pair continued in reverse gear, one more step backwards and with even weaker song material. Leaving aside King Crimson’s downright crushing legacy, Three Of A Perfect Pair is still a good album and would be one of the highlights of almost any other band. But with Crimson, the bar is so high that it is helplessly the band’s slightest studio album.

King Crimson’s run in the 80s lasted just over three years. During that time, the band made one groundbreaking album whose influence is still felt today in progressive music. Discipline’s follow-ups Beat and Three Of A Perfect Pair fall short of that masterpiece, but both albums are still among the few bright spots in the progressive rock mainstream in the shallow pastel-tinged musical climate of the 80s.

Best tracks: ”Thtee Of A Perfect Pair”, ”Sleepless”, ”Industry”, ”Dig Me”

Read also: Review: King Crimson – In The Court Of The Crimson King (1969)

Rating: 4 out of 5.
Rating: JANNE YLIRUUSI

Tracks

  1. ”Three of a Perfect Pair” 4:13
  2. ”Model Man” 3:49
  3. ”Sleepless” 5:24
  4. ”Man with an Open Heart” 3:05
  5. ”Nuages (That Which Passes, Passes Like Clouds)” 4:47
  6. ”Industry” 7:04
  7. ”Dig Me” 3:16
  8. ”No Warning” 3:29
  9. ”Larks’ Tongues in Aspic (Part III)” 6:05

King Crimson

Adrian Belew: fretted and fretless guitars, vocals Robert Fripp: guitar, frippertronics Tony Levin: bass guitar, Chapman stick, synthesizer, backing vocals Bill Bruford: acoustic and electric drums

Producer: King Crimson
Label: EG

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