Earthbound

Rarely does an artifact emerge that causes me to completely reassess how I perceive and feel about a Band nearly fifty years on.King Crimson in its earliest form produced two essential prog rock recordings. Then, I went a bit wobbly on KC. Robert Fripp became "interesting", but his bands were not essential. The first time I experienced KC live was during the tour when "Earthbound" was recorded. [If my memory serves me well, in Louisville, KY, Crimson opened an indoor arena show in front of Savoy Brown and Humble Pie.]I have owned just about every one of the early KC recordings (at least through Red and the USA live document) in various formats, including cassettes and 8 tracks. Yet, I did not know that Earthbound even existed. Recently, after talking to a friend about KC at his point in their career and this remastered (previously not domestically available) recording, I felt compelled to give it a listen.Full disclosure: I love the Adrian Belew period KC, and I expect to see their current incarnation and any version to come. I love solo Robert Fripp (and his duo explorations with Brian Eno). The work that Adrian and Robert did with David Bowie was astounding.So now, I am confronted with a remastered recording of a horribly recorded (1972) live King Crimson. I should have found this offering a poor example of a suspect band during a very trying time for Fripp and the rest of the Crimson Crew. Instead, I find that I cannot get enough of this aural earwig. It is fascinating. The Schizoid recording is not the cool, precise English prog-rock (with jazz overtones) that appeared on the first long-player. Nor, is it the expected set-piece of every King Crimson concert since forever. I expect it. We all expect that presentation. Yet, on Earthbound, Robert and his disintegrating band serve-up the most essential, interesting, compelling, and hardest blowing version of a REAL jazz version of Schizoid Man. And now some forty years on, this Schizoid Man (circa 1972) is presciently presented as a real, spot-on 21st Century Homonid. Then, the rest of the original recording takes over and this KC line-up puts forth a very good case for being considered "The Best", "The Quintessential", "The Gold Standard" King Crimson.(IMO) Every King Crimson line-up is the best and every KC recording is essential. Forty years ago, I never would have thought that was going to be my future assessment of this, the only, prog-rock band that still matters.I am sure many may think Axis has gone off the rails, but we are each allowed an opinion. This one just happens to be mine. I look forward to reading other reviews from the rest of the music lovers that post on Amazon.

Being a huge Crimson fan I purchased Earthbound when it was first released on Lp in 72 and I was 15 years old! Played it a couple of times but the muddled murky sound of the Lp was not impressing me so I shelved the album for many many years! I found it though when it was remastered and discovered how the music on the Lp itself is really quite impressive and with this 40th anniversary series has improved on the sound plus added some extra tracks but the real treasure here is the live in the summit studios with a new stereo and quad mix is simply as good as you will hear this band perform and with outstanding quality sound! This has been released in the Collector club #5 series so I knew it was superb performance but with the enhanced sound it is simply breathtaking! There is also the Schizoid men previously released that splices together sax and guitar leads from all the 21st Century Schizoid man performances! Personally I love this although some may not but anytime I get to hear Robert Fripp electric lead guitar solos you can count me in!

In the late 60's and the early 70's live recordings meaned irregular quality, audience sound interference and sound oscillation recordings. This album is also bad famed because it was recorded in a cassette tape back in a Volksvagen van. Well but it was on professional Ampex tape recorder and directly from the mixing console. This 30th Anniversary edition, was remastered in 24 bit stereo by Simon Heyworth and Robert Fripp himself. Unofortunately it is not expected to be issued in the 40th Anniversary series in DTS 5.1 probably due to the original tape limitation and there is only one new song nimprovisation called "Peoria", which is one of the cities they played live. Also the known remaining songs are suddenly cut at the end. It looks like during the shows, they played as in a jamming sessions and each song went on forever, so they needed to cut out the song for record purposes. No fadeout.The overall sound is good, although a little bit reinforced on highs, as expected on live recordings, but almost no audience sound and reasonobly free of sound fluctuation. The performace looked a little be unspired when compared with the studio versions, but the jamming ambience always add some punch on the show. The Schizoid Man is played a little bit sound distorted in the beginning compared with the regular version. A must for KC collectors. The booklet contains a lot of old news about KC break up at that time. By the way, I think the booklet format edition of this album inspired the Neil Young'Archive Vol.1 book. Compare and take your conclusions. This 30th Edition is only available in EU edition from Amazon.

Not bad, really, at all, and it's nice to know Fripp has found his sense of irony. This particular incarnation of Crimson- -hand-picked by Fripp, of course- -had all but disbanded by the time the tour on which this was recorded had even begun. You can tell. Boz Burrell, Ian Wallace and Mel Collins were headed to join Alexis Korner shortly to record an album as Snape, so they had no worries (Fripp was outnumbered anyway). Most of these tracks were encores, and as the band was nonexistent- -that is, not any longer Fripp's- -the three decided to just have as good a time as possible to get through it all. It seems they succeeded. 'Schizoid Man' is about as intense as things can get (very), and on 'Peoria' and 'Earthbound' you can practically hear Fripp cringing as the rest of the band just says 'what the hey' and does their own thing whether he likes it or not: hence the funky, bluesy extended jams and Burrell's strutting lyrics to 'Peoria', which Fripp no doubt took personally as he guested in his own band. Very interesting. The dodgy sound and weird segues fit perfectly and lend a very appropriately scuzzy aura to the whole affair. Awesome. I like it, you might not.

King Crimson in Quadraphonic 4.0 . If you have a surround system like a 5.1 you will be pleased with this Quad 4.0 release . It plays on NTSC region 0 ! Enjoy this one !

Como todos los discos de la serie 40TH ANNIVERSARY SERIES, esta edición se compone de 1 CD + 1 DVD (que sólo incluye música, nada de video o contenido multimedia). La grabación original es bastante pobre. Sin embargo, mejora bastante con la remasterización que se hizo en 2017 por esta nueva edición aunque no es tan impecable como otros discos de KING CRIMSON perteneciente a la serie 40TH... Sin embargo, lo que carece de calidad en la grabación, se compensa de sobra con la calidad de las interpretaciones que hace el grupo con interpretaciones extraordinarias, demostrándonos la gran habilidad técnica y de improvisación que tenía cada uno de los 4 miembros de esta alineación de KING CRIMSON. Yo sugiero ampliamente comprar este producto.

I used to have the album back in the day and thought it was terrible but now this 40th anniversary edition is more complete and what a difference i’m so impressed and wish i could have seen them at the time, i saw the larks tongues version and it still is the best i’ve ever seen for power

Super, l'album remasterisé avec 3 titres supplémentaires pour le cd, le dvd audio de bonus comprends lui une version 2017 de earthbound de presque 2h,le transfer du vinyl UK (plus anecdotique), des versions du morceau Schizoid man avec des solos différents a chaque fois (plus anecdotique aussi, je vais avoir du mal à ecouter 15 fois le même titre) mais surtout un live au Summit Studio de 72 avec un son excellent d'une durée de presque 2h également, superbe découverte..Je ne vais pas faire la fine bouche pour le prix d un album, et cet album en particulier de King Crimson.. Album de transition..Le son est crade c'est indéniable, mais on entends chaque instrument, et les morceaux sont tres bons, laissant places aux improvisations..j'ai beaucoup écouté la copie que j'avais..Je ne peux pas etre decu par l'achat d un album que j'aimais deja, pour faire un commentaire objectif, je dirais que pour le prix d'un album, cette édition avec dvd audio en bonus est une réussite !(pourquoi pas 5 etoiles ? Les bonus auraient sûrement pu etre meilleurs, mais le live au Summit Studio vaut a lui seul l'achat de cette édition)

Excelente edición de 40 anniv.! el material extra es excelente y hubiera estado bien que lo presentaran también en el cd de audio. Lllegó muy bien y a tiempo, a diferencia de los últimos pedidos que he hecho, que estan tardando más de un mes!