101. King Crimson
Hackney Empire
7 September 2015
Hackney Empire, once the gilded playground of music-hall royalty, now squats between a discount nail salon and a Cash Converters, flanked by a Wetherspoons on one side and a Pizza Express on the other. She’s a bit tatty these days, the old girl, threadbare carpets, peeling cherubs, the faint aroma of spilt ale from gigs past, but, like Keith Richards’ underwear, it’s earned every stain.
That’s where my mate and I arrived, gently soused on organic wine from some East End hang-out where the staff look like they are paid in bitcoin, to see Robert Fripp’s latest incarnation of King Crimson, a lineup that seems to change so often it’s less a band than a rolling arts residency.
You know you’re at a prog show the moment you clock three drum kits parked front-and-centre, each one resembling an alien praying mantis built from chrome and snare skins, whilst the rest of the musicians perch behind them like passengers on an open-top bus tour. Fripp himself sits on a high stool, headphones clamped on, expression fixed at mildly bemused librarian. One half-expects Toyah to wander on with a pot of Darjeeling.
Crimson are notorious for ignoring anything recorded before the drummer’s last payslip, yet tonight they crack open the vault. The tribal rumble of “Larks’ Tongues in Aspic, Part One” triggers an audible, collective gasp from an audience. Soon we’re treated to slices of In the Court of the Crimson King, In the Wake of Poseidon, Red, even the overly neglected Islands. Whenever something especially obscure surfaces, silver-haired gents nod at each other with conspiratorial delight. One chap actually rises to perform what can only be described as a prog jig during Epitaph, lost in a blissful fugue.
The three-drummer setup is the night’s real revelation. Rather than one player wrestling some impossible time signature, the trio volley polyrhythms between them like séance participants. It’s intricate and utterly mesmerising, a kinetic sculpture of sticks, cymbals, and fixed mutual eye contact. Easily the most impressive battery of percussion I have ever witnessed.
Fripp, for his part, is the embodiment of understated authority. He wanders on to polite applause, spends a full minute rubbing oil into his guitar like he’s polishing a Stradivarius, then casually unleashes riffs so crystalline they draw actual gasps. The crowd reacts as if Moses has just parted the Red Sea, only with fewer commandments and more diminished fifths.
We’d arrived armed with snark, braced for a night of endless noodling; we left converts, astonished by how much fire, precision and, yes, heart these prog sorcerers can still summon. Watching King Crimson in full flight is like seeing an Olympic synchronised-swim team perform: impossible, slightly terrifying, and glorious. The Hackney Empire may be shabby, but on nights like this she’s still the grandest dame in town.