King Crimson: Double Duo 2000 Tour
Exclusive to nugs.net, twenty-eight more hi-res official concert recordings from King Crimson are now available to stream in the nugs app or order online. Courtesy of the prog-rock icons’ archivist, read more about the transformative ‘Double Duo’ North America tour from the turn of the century, featuring the dynamic lineup of Adrian Belew (guitar & vocals), Robert Fripp (guitar), Trey Gunn (touch guitar), and Pat Mastelotto (acoustic and electronic percussion).
In 1999, with Bruford now committed to pursuing his own band Earthworks and Levin signed up for a world tour with the singer Seal, a new King Crimson coalesced around Belew, Fripp, Gunn, and Mastelotto It had taken the best part of three years and over 50 gigs by the ProjeKcts for this particular version to present itself. In a bitter-sweet twist, Levin’s tour with Seal was unexpectedly canceled and Belew lobbied for the bassist’s inclusion when he and Fripp met in Nashville in August 1999. However, Fripp’s instinct was to go with the Double Duo as he now dubbed the group. Levin was sanguine about the new line-up in his online diary. “Robert has wisely decided to go ahead anyway, with the invitation to Bill and me that we can come back for the next incarnation. I agree that it’s time for a Crimson release and tour — if we wait for everyone to be available, it could take years.”
The state of flux typifying this period threatened to engulf Belew who had qualms not only about the amount of time Fripp envisaged the new group should tour but also his own role within the new line-up. In September, as Fripp was packing his bags at his house in Dorset ahead of his return to America he received a call from Crimson’s manager Richard Chadwick with the news that Belew had quit. “Crimson usually breaks up after tours or during rehearsals,” Fripp noted at the time. “The Double Duo is a first in that it has broken up before rehearsing, recording and touring. Even for Crimson, this is an achievement.”
These teething problems were overcome and the new quartet decamped to Belew’s basement studio with the challenge of writing and recording an album’s worth of new material in just eight weeks. They succeeded, in fact, in recording two albums, as they also completed an album of improvisations, under the name “Projekct X”.
Released in 2000, the 12th King Crimson studio album finds a slimmed-down quartet breaking new ground as well as retooling older themes with FraKctured and Lark’s Tongues In Aspic Part IV, both containing some of Fripp’s most terrifyingly complicated lines to date.
Alongside Pat Mastelotto’s arsenal of electronic drums and Trey Gunn’s growling touch guitar, Adrian Belew’s scarily manic soloing and his penchant for surreal lyrics run riot during the roiling, skewed gait of The World’s My Oyster Soup Kitchen Floor Wax Museum. And they even Crimsonise the humble 12-bar with ProzaKc Blues.
2000 saw the band touring in support of the album in Europe, Japan and North America, with the new songs featuring heavily in the set alongside sections of improvisation, old favourites from the 80s and 90s, plus an acoustic solo spot from Adrian, and on many nights an encore of David Bowie’s Heroes.
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