Starless and Bible Black is King Crimson’s sixth studio album and the second in the so-called Wetton/Bruford trilogy.
King Crimson had entered a new era with last year’s Larks’ Tongues In Aspic. The new King Crimson’s music was heavier and more angular than before. The melodies were more dissonant and the rhythms more complex. Starless and Bible Black builds on its predecessor and is at least as defiant and bold.
The band’s line-up remained the same, but wild percussionist Jamie Muir had left the band after a religious awakening. Muir became a monk in a Buddhist monastery and for a time left music behind. That left guitarist/founding member Robert Fripp, bassist/vocalist John Wetton, violinist/keyboardist David Cross and drummer Bill Bruford. Muir’s wild-card influence on Crimson’s music is missed at times, but Bruford took many elements of Muir’s experimental style into his own playing and makes up for it admirably.
Of the 70s rock bands, Henry Cow and King Crimson were the most daring improvisers. For both bands, producing so-called formal compositions was always a painstaking process, which is partly why both bands’ 1974 studio albums contain a significant amount of improvised material. Of course, this approach was also driven by the bands’ love of free improvisation and their ability to practice it at a high level. Neither of these bands stuck to jamming on a few chords, but played boldly complex music without the safety net of studio repetition, and sometimes the end results were difficult to distinguish from the actual compositions of the bands.
However, Henry Cow and King Crimson took a different approach to how to use improvisation within their studio albums. On Unrest (1974), Henry Cow improvised in the studio, building layer upon layer of semi-spontaneous complex studio compositions. King Crimson, on the other hand, took as a starting point the live improvisations they had played on the tour preceding Starless and Bible Black, and then improved them slightly in the studio by editing and adding some overdubs.
However, the live nature of Starless and Bible Black did not end with improvisations, but also some of the material composed for the album was recorded at least partly live in front of an audience. Even the album’s sparkling highlight ”Fracture” was mostly played live. On Starless and Bible Black, King Crimson made every effort to disguise the origin of the material by erasing the audience’s voices and mixing the material to sound as much as possible as if it had been recorded in the studio in the first place. The band didn’t do this, in my opinion, to deceive record buyers, they just saw this as a different and valid way of making music.
The origin of the Starless and Bible Black material was only revealed to the general public a few years later in the cover text of Robert Fripp curated compilation album A Young Person’s Guide to King Crimson (1975). The appreciation of Starless and Bible Black has since then perhaps even been somewhat dimmed by the fact that some of the material was recorded live and improvised. I find this very strange. Good music is good music and for me, the knowledge that these master musicians have been able to create such great music spontaneously improvising and playing live raises rather than lowers my appreciation.
Of the four improvisations on the album, two are above the rest. The first of these is the nine-minute title track ”Starless And Bible Black”, which grows from a quiet and painfully plaintive whisper into a full-on roar with the whole quartet playing at full tilt. In the first half of the song, Wetton’s gruff bass riff tries to lure Bruford in, who finally, after resisting the temptation for a long time, slips tastefully into the groove somewhere around the four-minute mark. Bruford and Wetton then strut their stuff in a varied and funky way (Bruford and Wetton were big fans of Herbie Hancock’s funky jazz-rock band Headhunters) with Fripp’s guitar wailing more and more painfully towards the end. A very impressive song indeed.
Another improvisation above the rest is ”Trio”, which lasts just under six minutes. ”Trio” is one of the most distinctive moments on the album. Bill Bruford sat through the song with his drumsticks crossed over his chest without playing a beat. Without the drums, the trio is allowed to play in peace and with sensitivity. David Cross’ violin and Fripp’s Mellotron with flute setting alternate in a low-key, atmospheric way. The result is magical. And what is incredible: it is indeed completely improvised. Even Wetton, who played on the track himself, has said that the experience almost made him believe in telepathy. The song is crowned by the funny and staggering fact that Fripp and co. were so taken by Bruford’s self-control that he was awarded composition credit for the song. For a song he didn’t play at all and did nothing but stay out of the way. That’s just great! And very King Crimson.
”The Mincer” improvisation also deserves a mention for the fact that Wetton’s vocals were added in the studio afterwards. The solution works surprisingly well and Wetton’s vocals crown a song that sounds menacing and understated. Only the ending is a bit disappointing: while recording the song live, the tape ran out and the song ends like a dead end.
What about the actual composed pieces of the album?
The first of these, ”The Great Deceiver”, provides a furious and intense start to the album. The song also features a rare lyrical contribution from Fripp in the form of the chorus ”Cigarettes, ice cream, figurines of the Virgin Mary”, which is repeated insistently throughout the song, in amazement at the commercialisation of the Vatican. Apart from the chorus, the lyrics here, as on the other tracks on the album, are by outside member Richard Palmer-James. ”The Great Deceiver” is a fine example of Crimson’s ability to really rock hard while still maintaining the band’s typical complexity.
”Lament”, which directly follows ”The Great Deceiver”, is a great song that at first seems like a fateful ballad, but then turns into a great jerky metal mutant funk. Wetton’s bass picking on the track is really delicious and throughout the album his gorgeous, muscular, shuddering bass sound makes a big impression. Wetton has also clearly improved as a vocalist compared to the previous album and this is especially evident on ”Lament” where Wetton convincingly sings both the softer ballad-like parts of the song as well as the aggressive parts poured out at a breathtaking pace.
The third of the composed tracks is the beautiful and mournful ”The Night Watch” with Fripp’s laser-like and sustained guitar solo, which is absolutely stunning to hear. The solo is one of the most beautiful of Fripp’s career, which is full of one great guitar solo after another.
The album’s most notable composition is the closing 11-minute ”Fracture” which was inspired by Fripp’s finger exercises on guitar. The song, which gradually grows to be furiously heavy and complex, features Fripp’s now legendary and staggeringly complex ”moto perpetua” guitar part. Moto perpetua is a musical term which I understand to refer to a continuous, uninterrupted flow of notes, usually played at a fast tempo. If the definition I described above is not 100% accurate from a musicological point of view, at least I think it describes Frippie’s intricately crawling solo at around 130 bpm quite well. Besides Fripp’s head-spinning guitar playing, the song, which metallically screeches in irregular time signatures, is the most complex song in King Crimson’s 70s repertoire. ’Fracture’, with its controlled, cyclical guitar patterns, also showed the direction far into the future of where Fripp was going musically, both with King Crimson and in his career.
1974 was a huge year for King Crimson. Just seven months after Starless And Bible Black, Red was released in October that year and quickly became one of the band’s best-loved albums. And because the album that preceded Starless, Larks’s Tongues In Aspic (1973), had also been such a groundbreaking album, Starless And Bible Black has the unfortunate fate of being somewhat, if not forgotten, at least underrated.
Starless And Bible Black was unlucky to appear between two colossal King Crimson albums, but if you forget the comparison the album certainly has no trouble standing on its own merits.
Best tracks: ”The Great Deceiver”, ”Lament”, ”Fracture”, The Night Watch”, ”Trio”, ”Starless And Bible Black”
Author: JANNE YLIRUUSI
Tracks:
1. The Great Deceiver (4:02)
2. Lament (4:00)
3. We’ll Let You Know (3:46)
4. The Night Watch (4:37) *
5. Trio (5:41)
6. The Mincer (4:10)
7. Starless and Bible Black (9:11)
8. Fracture (11:14)
Robert Fripp: guitar, Mellotron, Hohner pianet John Wetton: bass guitar, vocals Bill Bruford: drums, percussion David Cross: violin, viola, Mellotron, Hohner pianet
Production: King Crimson
Label Island
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