Drummer reacts to "FraKctured" (Live) by King Crimson 

This song is from 2000, though it's a sort of sequel/reimagining of the 1973-74 live showstopper "Fracture", which has never had a studio recording but was included on the half-studio half-live Starless and Bible Black album and is highly recommended.

This lineup made some of the best Crimson output. ❤ Fripp lives about 45 mins from my house 😂

"...it's pretty but it's eerie sounding" There is something deeply menacing about Robert Fripp's guitar that has been the one constant across all of King Crimson's incarnations. It sinks right down to one's core and embeds there. So many great guitarists but no one else seems to operate within the same realm.

This is off the studio album 'The ConstruKction of Light'. A very good album.

With Crimson, the live version is ALWAYS to be preferred. Imagine watching Fripp perform that piece less than ten feet from you. I got to see them do this piece twice live. It's breath-taking to witness.

This is from the 2000 lineup of KC. The track is a reimagining of the track Fracture from the 1974 album Starless and Bible Black. The two guitarists Adrien Belew and Robert Fripp are two of the greatest guitar innovators in this genre. Well worth checking out the original Fracture too. It's seismic.

According to a biography I have, Robert Fripp is naturally left-handed, but opted to play right-handed when he got his first guitar when he was 11. That makes his speed and skill even more amazing.

Please do ‘Waiting Man’ live 1982 for a dose of 80’s Crimson! Bill provides wonderful percussion sounds.

Thank you for your comments. King Crimsom are insane on teknik. Its hard to believe its real people behind the instruments. No one could get Robert Frip the arting after...

Robert Fripp is the guitar on so many recordings of the good and great over decades. A perfectionist with amazing control and imagination.

I'm kinda partial to this era of KC because this is when I discovered the band. Konstruction of light is one of the coolest songs ever written. Buh-lee-dat!

Thanks for doing more King Crimson! I’ve been listening to them since I was 16 years old and I’m now on my sixties and I’m very much enjoying your channel!

Tony Levin is playing a Chapman Stick. Has a huge range. You sound the strings by tapping so both hands can be playing different parts at once.

The thing about Robert Fripp is that as amazing as his fretting hand and fingers are what he is playing with his right hand (picking hand) is out of this world. His picking is astonishing!

Fripp demonstrating why he has been called a genius... awesome! The only other band at this level (chops + challenging material) IMHO is Gentle Giant (PS they don't block). Suggested songs: Free Hand or His Last Voyage, both from the Free hand album. Steven Wilson deigned to remaster it in um 2021? You'd want those versions.... :) Thanks!

KC and Yes are my two “go to” bands for progressive rock. The bass player in this version of KC is Trey Gunn. He and the drummer have several projects (TU and KTU are 2 of them) that you will probably dig.

If you get a chance, watch any of the live video from the last tour, specifically the drumming is astonishing, 3 drummers in sync on the front of the stage, though they didn’t play fractured when I saw them on that tour I did see it live with the line up from this video, I remember remarking that it looked like smoke was coming off Robert’s fingers, must have been a trick of the light….. or was it?

King Crimson Is my fav Band so I immediately subscribe to your channel. The reaction to Larks pt.1 is wonderful! I wonder why you didn't switch to Larks part 2 and Easy Money (again from Larks' Tongue in Aspic), superlative compositions! And I calmly await the passage to Starless and Bible Black (Fracture, Great Deceiver...), to my beloved "Islands", and then to the crimson incarnation of the 80s with the Discipline/Beat/Three of a perfect pair triplet. In this "FraKctured" the lineup is very different from that of In tue Court of the CK, and both are different from the line up of Larks, Starless and Bible Black and Red. In Larks on vocals (and bass, and what bass!) is the great John Wetton, in this video instead on bass (that Is not a bass but a Warr Guitar is Trey Gunn, a Beast! , on vocals and guitar (in addition to Fripp) the great Adrian Belew, on drums the great Pat Mastelotto. In the 90s and 00s you will find the two formations called "double trio" and "double duo" (the One you see here in FraKctured) from around 2015 they return with a crazy formation with three drums (and 8 or 9 members), in the 80s the undying line up Fripp / Belew / Bruford /Levin. In short, a rabbithole equal only to that of Frank Zappa and very few others. After the work in the studio, I would also recommend some live performances with films, to understand how those compositions were played, who did what. And then there's Robert Fripp: a musical genius. You will find his guitar on many important and famous works of the 70s and 80s (for example the guitar line of "Heroes" by David Bowie ... that's always Fripp) Ok, I wrote too much. I hope you will continue with the King's reactions... I will certainly follow you. I've seen King Crimson live 10 times, with different lineups, and each of those concerts has been an out-of-body experience, impossible to explain in words! Happy listening and greetings from Sicily!!!

Yeah, this is kinda tough for you on a first time listen. Enthralling musicianship! And a great composition! It's a later composition and line-up. You've got SO much widely different stuff yet to explore!

Bob Fripp’s ‘high wire act’ this is high end musicianship - but everyone is on their A game here … and THREE of the best drummers on the planet? As far as I know FRIPP was only impressed by the cover of his part in the companion piece FRACTURE by Maria Barbieri who is about to tour with BIG BIG TRAIN who you should check out! Ingenious Devices is a good overview and shows great musicianship and composition as well as being a fitting tribute to the late David Longdon and showing the new lineup in action on the final track. East Coast Racer is a masterpiece place to start. You’ll love it

Next up for a King Crimson reaction should be 'Level Five' from the Power to Believe album. It is dark, heavy, and when you think it's safe it goes darker and heavier.

Saw this line up in 2003 at the Fillmore in Denver. Great show.

Thanks for the reaction. Eerie is a perfect way to describe this song. I feel like you deserve an easy listening KC song now haha Easy Money. 🙌🙏❤️🔥😎👏👌

It's great how Fripp pulls this stuff off and appears to be a spectator rather than a participant.

Fractured is decent, but Fracture -specifically the version on Starless and Bible Black - is my favorite KC instrumental. The last third in particular is the snarling beast of Crimson in Beast Mode. I probably listen to it every couple of weeks over 40 or so years.. I've only made it through Fractured twice.

I saw that tour in SF. Great show.

King Crimson is the fun side of education.

"Level 5" (from the album EleKtriK) is an amazingly great track too. And if you like eerie, try "The Deception of the Thrush".

Cool. I saw them in Milwaukee on this tour.

The bass Trey is playing is a Warr Guitar another STICK touch instrument

Robert is a Monster. :)

that part a 6:35 is probaby the heaviest King Crimson ever went live. Altough the studio version of level 5 is probably even heavier. Also I love that Fripp is playing all his stuff flawlessly and Belew messes up his part at 9:00 lol They released ConstruKction of Light in 2000, but people did not like it all that much, especially cause they used alot of synthetic drum sounds. so in (i believe) 2018 they rerecorded all drums and remastered the whole thing, making it sound so much better. The remaster is called ReconstruCktion of Light. and the part at 6:35 in the video also sounds so good in the studio version now.

The original studio version from 2000 is LIT. There's also another newer studio version, with Mastelotto re-recording the drum parts with an acustic kit. I personally much prefer the original. The part of the uber fast Fripp part is diabolical, dark and claustrofobic AF.

As a drummer, you should hear the 2013-2021 lineup, which featured *three* drummers! (One of them also played keyboards). "Radical Action" is probably King Crimson's last great epic instrumental, specifically the 2018+ version of it. The only online recording of that version (they kept tinkering with it - this lineup only played live) that I can find is the one i'll put in a reply to this (It's also on the Audio Diary set, as the "Radical Action" from the 2018 disc, but they haven't put Audio Diary one up on RU-vid yet. That lineup also played several percussion-only pieces. The best is the last one they did, "Drumzilla", but it's not yet on a regular release. But any rendering of "Hell Hounds of Krim" or "Devil Dogs of Tesselation Row" (there are several on the official channel) would be great - I personally prefer Devil Dogs, but both are great.

The king

Robot Fripp at work.

just found the channel, love the videos. Sucks some of the KC videos are getting taken down, thx for putting them on your patreon, max. You should react to Black Midi, my favorite band right now. Just hit the scene in 2019 and they got a unique sound, definitely inspired by king crimson. Also their drummer Morgan Simpson is a fucking beast. Hard to choose but I think the album Cavalcade is the best place to start. Literally just listening to the first two tracks back to back tells you what they're all about. So ig I'm saying listen to "John L" but don't watch the music video otherwise nothing will make sense lol

Fripp's rack and guitar is called, "Voyager" he plays Soundscapes and you need to listen to those too

Crimson is about building tension within each section, but not providing release when expected, this is why it feels "eerie" you're expecting a cadence or a resolution but you might not get it until the very last bar.

I think Fripp may have glanced at the fretboard once during this whole mixed martial arts/guitar assault.. Bob creeps me out..

It's like a twisted nursery rhyme.

They opened for Tool or if I’m wrong, Tool opened for them 2 years after this album.

What’s amazing is that with a virtueoso like Fripp on stage Adrian gets no gratitude for his playing!!!

fracture from album SDTARLESS AND BIBLE BLACK please

Innate sense of lunacy

People were requesting Fracture, which is a different piece of music. But this is cool too.

"You ready, Robert?" - more useless words were never spoken, Adrian! He's always ready! 😂 Oh, the younger cousin of Fracture (aka the impossible-to-play song, according to Fripp himself). FraKctured isn't any easier to play than its predecessor, though. Although the _motto perpetuo_ section in Fracture is ridiculously hard to play for how long it extends, there are sections in FraKctured where he plays more notes per second than he does in Fracture. And this here is kind of a sloppy play from Fripp's standards!

I'm new to your channel. Have you checked out any Allen Holdsworth?

Playing this shit LIVE is insane. How do they remember all these complicated tunes? No sheet music.

If I'm not mistaken, some of Fripp's guitar parts clock in at 9 notes per second.

6:37-8:20 what Fripp does here is beyond my understanding. I wonder if there's any other guitar players who can play this. I wonder.

Fripp is notorious for this kind of thing…

How? HOW? How do get these videos up without Fripp blocking them? (Oh, I guess it is.) Anyways, this kind of music is for guitarists who practice to Paganini exercises. It's a follow-up to a famous KC song called "Fracture" from the Red album (1975). And don't worry about hearing the studio version. KC during this period was extremely clinical, and the live performances are nearly identical to the studio renditions. The drummer here is Pat Mastelotto who first joined KC in 1995 alongside Billy B, but then took over as the sole drummer on the tour to support this album (2000). He was then part of the the three drummer lineup that toured through much of the late teens.

so many good band I skipped King Crimson now that and Oingo Boingo are a staple.

On a related note, you might want to check out this guy's efforts to teach himself another Fripp composition, Fracture (which is NOT the piece you heard today). ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-rTIn4cIvtp0.html

Whoever controls KC's copywrite is awful. They take everything down.

Call me old fashioned, but I prefer the song Fracture from Starless & Bible Black. Feels just a bit cold and uninteresting…

Fripp mitico