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Tuoreen Soundin KC-jutussa toimittaja ehdottaa tosissaan(?) THRaKaTTaKia aloittelijoille Redin ja Three of a Perfect Pairin ohella :D
 
Ohhoh. Tietysti on fiksua ottaa otokset eri vuosikymmenten tyyleistä, mutta 80-luvun levyistä Discipline olisi luultavasti parempi esimerkki. THRaKaTTaK puolestaan...
 
En pysty tosin kovin vankkaa mielipidettä levystä rakentamaan, sillä kuuntelu on jäänyt puolitiehen kun sitä on pari kertaa yrittänyt.
 
Jaan tässä kanssanne last.fm:ään kirjoittamani mielipiteen THRaKaTTaKista. Uskoisin, että olennainen välittyy.
 
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Do you know why I called Islands "the most forgettable" KC record instead of calling it "the worst"?
 
THRaKaTTaK's why.
 
Now, in the 90s King Crimson produced an album and a track both called "THRAK". ("THRAK" by the way is a non-word, with the whimsical meaning of "the sound of 117 guitars almost striking the same chord simultaneously". This is Frippian humour, and I'm one of the five or so people on Earth who do find it amusing.) "THRAK" is a crushingly heavy instrumental in 5/4, a little exercise in rhythm and counter-rhythm. When performed live, the band used "THRAK" as a starting point for an improvisational jam. THRaKaTTaK is a collection of recordings of said jams, with the THRAK theme both opening and closing the album and six long improvs between them.
 
Funnily enough none of the jams are actually genuine single takes, but rather each of them is spliced together from a group of recordings, and you can easily pinpoint the exact moments where the cut'n'pastes take place. Maybe there was an inner logic for selecting these specific takes to make up "Mother Hold the Candle Steady While I Shave the Chicken's Lip" and these others to create "This Night Wounds Time", but I really don't know what it could be.
 
The real problem with WHaKKaRaT is that the improvisations themselves suck a truckload. There are two main reasons for this.
 
Firstly, they are meandering, abstract and aimless. No structures are built, no themes developed, no telepathic interplay between musicians, no common ground or goal to aim for. Just six musicians (this was the "double trio" period) noodling around, jacking off, making sounds. You're listening to King Crimson, yet "THRaKaTTaK part 1" is very much what you'd expect a group of ADD-diagnosed preschoolers to produce if exposed to a room full of instruments. The improvisations don't echo or hark back to their motherTHRAK all that much; KC could have just as well based the jams on "Humpty Dumpty" or John Cage's "4'33"" as far as I'm concerned.
 
Secondly, and even more amazingly, the "improvisational" material itself repeats itself between the jams -- A LOT. I swear there isn't a single jam here that doesn't contain Belew fucking around with his stupid piano sound always playing the exact same stuff. Yes, those dissonant intervals sure sound fresh and beastly every time! Wait, here's Bruford tinkling with his Magic Marimba again, and now Sir Fripp joins in with his signature descending chromatic scale fragments! Oh boy, nothing spells "innovative, courageous group improvisation" quite like six players each playing their own pre-determined exercises!
 
It doesn't really help that a lot of the instrumentation is sterile to the hospital-level and beyond -- lifeless electronic marimbas, MIDI-controlled piano sounds, various electronic drums, heavily processed guitars and Fripp's stereotypical soundscapes. KRaPaTTaK is like a golem wrought from plastic -- ugly, hulking, unintelligent, predestined to failure. But it is, by the ten sephiroth, certainly not forgettable.