These were interesting times for Robert Fripp, ye olde scholastic of the progressive rock scene. In 1978 he had released Exposure, an album that he described as "A Day in the Life" for that period. He had also explored punk and new wave with the League of Gentlemen, a band that featured ex-XTC keyboardist Barry Andrews and eventual B-52s bassist Sara Lee. He then put together an ensemble of Talking Heads guitarist Adrian Belew, bassist Tony Levin whose credits spanned from Peter Gabriel to Paul Simon to Chuck Mangione, and old colleague Bill Bruford. The band originally called itself Discipline, but Fripp is reported to have said that "The music is so good that there can be only one name for it: King Crimson."

This was not your father's (or your older brother's) King Crimson. Gone were the mellotrons and layered arrangements, and "sounds better with black lights" lyrics. The King Crimson of 1981 was lean, mean, and hideously polyrhythmic. The resultant album, Discipline, is considered by many to be the best of the Fripp-Bruford-Belew-Levin quartet. The two-guitars-bass-drums instrumentation had never been pushed so far before and may not have been pushed so far since. The end result is an album that sounds as though it could have been recorded in 2005 and not 1981.

This review is available in book format (hardcover and paperback) in Music Street Journal: 2005 Year Book Volume 1 at https://garyhillauthor.com/Music-Street-Journal-2005.