This Is A Dangerous Place: King Crimson’s Discipline
Every Sunday, milk crate revisits an iconic piece of music history—artist, album, or otherwise—as a part of our weekly crate digging series.
Design by Sophie Parrish
BY Mario Sierra Roca
When a band takes more than five years to write and record new material, especially with a newer lineup, fans tend to get skeptical. Returns from hiatuses are always 50/50 — some good, some terribly bad. In the bad category, you have acts such as Van Halen in 2004 and The New Cars in 2006. In the good category, you have acts such as The Cure in 2019, A Tribe Called Quest in 2016, and the often overlooked King Crimson. In 1981, seven years after Red, they returned with Discipline. The only remaining original members were Bill Bruford (drums, percussion) and, of course, Robert Fripp (guitar). Now, they are joined by Adrian Belew (guitar, vocals) — a touring musician of Talking Heads, David Bowie, Frank Zappa — and Tony Levin (bass, background vocals), a session musician for Peter Gabriel.
Pressing play on Discipline is like entering into a different world, especially for King Crimson. We’re introduced to this new line up with “Elephant Talk,” a 4-minute-and-42-second track that doesn’t waste a beat. Immediately embracing a funkier and more jagged groove than their previous works, it’s a breath of fresh air. Fripp’s guitar wails every melody, even imitating elephants as Belew croons and moans, mocking the different ways people communicate with each other. With his years working with Talking Heads oozing out of him, Belew alphabetically belittles the way we have arguments and agreements; we bicker and banter; we comment and contradict; we debate and discuss, express, exclaim, and of course, we elephant talk.
As soon as Fripp lets out one final elephant trumpet from his guitar, “Frame by Frame” rips into what might be one of King Crimson’s greatest riffs. Fast and ridiculously hard to play, “Frame by Frame” showcases the work of both Belew and Fripp in perfect guitar synergy. While the band switches time signatures like speeding down the highway, Belew and Levin steady us with their call-and-response vocals, occasionally harmonizing. As the first instrumental verse and chorus end, the band shifts into high gears again, starting up again from the beginning. The song is structured so the first half mirrors the second half, which works perfectly when the entire band halts at the end and “Matte Kudasai,” slowly creeps to a start.
“Matte Kudasai,” translated to “Please Wait” in Japanese, is possibly one of the greatest ballads written. Among King Crimson’s most standard songs, Matte Kudasai serves as a slowing down point from the previous tracks. Being the only ballad in this album makes it stand out even more, as it halts us to reel us in and make sure we truly listen. This seems to be the most sentimental Belew’s lyrics get, with the most emotion from Fripp’s guitar, grounding from Levin’s bass and Buford tying it all together. No flashy solos, fast riffs, eccentric drum fills or funky basslines here! The song revolves around creating an atmosphere of the pining and longing of an overseas lover, with the the lyrics reading: “Still by the window pane / Pain, like the rain that’s falling / She waits in the air, matte kudasai / She sleeps in a chair in her sad America / When, when was the night so long? / Long, like the notes I’m sending.” The original version of this song (which is included in the album as an alternate version on later pressings of the album) houses an enchanting guitar solo from Fripp, overdriven but not distorted, swaying throughout the entire song. With King Crimson being such a meticulously crafted band, these two versions can create two different feelings within the listener; whichever one you like more is up to you. Matte Kudasai will leave anyone entranced on first listen. It is truly a perfect song.
The switch into “Indiscipline,” showcases how great of a force King Crimson is. The track sounds like the anxiety that comes with unraveling one’s own pieces of artistry. With no actual sources backing up this claim besides 45 years of fan speculation, it seems that “Indiscipline,” is heavily inspired by Belew’s then wife and her thought process about any sort of painting or sculpture she was working on at the time. Powered throughout is the pulsing of Belew’s guitar and Levin’s bass, both in sync in the verses.The choruses express a much more raw, truthful and emotional stance on what it feels like to not know what you want to do with your art, seeing if you even like it at all. Sonically, Buford locks the groove into place, playing strictly in common time, while the guitar lines in 15/8 evoke that deeply familiar form of anxiety. Though, Belew seems to express an ever-growing love for his piece of art, even through failure and anxiety. He talks to us: “I repeat myself when under stress / The more I look at it, the more I like it / Heh, I do think it’s good.” By the end of the song, as every instrument seems to climax together he settles in on his decision and yells “I like it!”
Inspired by the death of John Lennon and Belew’s own near-assault, “Thela Hun Ginjeet” (anagram for Heat in the Jungle) speaks about crime in the streets of New York — heat in place of guns and NYC the concrete Jungle. The chorus consists of Belew repeating “Thela Hun Ginjeet” over and over again, as if chanting. Buford’s animalistic drumming and Fripp’s eccentric guitar work sound like shards of breaking glass or birds ringing out in distress. Belew’s verses are spoken word, retelling the encounters of John Lennon’s murder in the first, and his own close encounter in the second. The song ends with an actual audio clip of Belew telling the story to Fripp, Levin, and Buford in the studio. “Thela Hun Ginjeet” showcases how King Crimson is an anomaly in progressive rock, weaving spoken word into their new groovier, funkier, more percussion-based sound.
The penultimate track of Discipline is also the longest. Clocking in at 8 minutes and 22 seconds, “The Sheltering Sky,” named after the Paul Bowles novel of the same name, is one of two instrumental songs on the album. Often compared to New Age music, due to its sonic identity, “The Sheltering Sky” serves as a timelapse of a painting covering a blank canvas. It shows us how a King Crimson song is built up, without an actual theme to talk about. All the talking is done by Fripp’s synth-induced solos and runs, all of which are done on guitar with a Roland GR-300 and an Electro Harmonix attack-delay pedal. This combination is what makes this piece feel so New Age-y, opening itself up to nontraditional guitar sounds.
The title track of this album is also instrumental, but lends itself to a very different sound. Led entirely by Fripp and Belew as a duo, they trade phrases and solos. All of this while constantly changing time signatures and rhythms, giving the impression of never truly ending. It’s almost hypnotic and seems to be even proto-math rock-y. According to Fripp himself, there is no “lead instrument” on this song, which, while I can agree with to some extent, it seems that most of the truly interesting stuff is played by himself and Belew. Buford’s drumming style is much more laidback here, heavily inspired by Indonesian gamelan music which is home to interlocking polymetric percussion patterns.
King Crimson’s 1981 endeavor of a concept Discipline was an entire shift for their career. Five years after Red and eleven after The Court of the Crimson King, King Crimson take on a completely new sound in the ’80s, one that is much more melody-based than their earlier work, which relies heavily on creating an ambient and droning atmosphere along with volume dynamics between members. Their older work is more resemblant of bands such as Yes and Can. They also had a bigger line up in their earlier formations, with both woodwind and string instruments. In the 1980s, King Crimson was exclusively a quartet that lasted through Discipline, Beat (1982), and Three of a Perfect Pair (1984). They leaned into the likes of Talking Heads and even groups like Gang of Four. Across their discography, songs follow a regular verse and chorus structure, maintaining their Crimsonian weirdness through the usage of time signature changes and polymetric modulation. Discipline marked new territory for King Crimson, and by the end of the album they already had perfected it.