Starless and Bible Black is King Crimson’s great sleight of hand — a studio album that is mostly live, assembled from concert improvisations with the applause wiped away. Released in 1974 and named from a line of Dylan Thomas, it contains ‘Fracture,’ which Robert Fripp calls one of the hardest pieces he has ever played.

The short version

Starless and Bible Black (1974) is the sixth studio album by King Crimson, made by the quartet of Robert Fripp, John Wetton, Bill Bruford and violinist David Cross, with lyrics by Richard Palmer-James. Only the first two tracks were recorded in a studio; the rest come from concerts in Amsterdam, Glasgow and Zurich, edited and overdubbed until the audience vanished. It is the last album with Cross as a member, and it ends with the ferocious ‘Fracture.’

An album made on stage

The problem was simple: relentless touring had left King Crimson with almost no new written material. The solution was audacious. The band had been improvising ever more freely on stage, so they recorded the concerts, chose the best of what emerged, took the tapes into the studio, added overdubs and removed the applause. Only ‘The Great Deceiver’ and ‘Lament’ were made in a studio from scratch. ‘We’ll Let You Know’ was improvised in Glasgow, ‘The Mincer’ in Zurich. The rest came from one extraordinary night at the Concertgebouw in Amsterdam — where the Mellotron broke down partway through ‘The Night Watch,’ so the song had to be finished later in the studio.

The sound

This is the sound of four musicians thinking as one. Robert Fripp’s guitar is a weapon, John Wetton’s bass carries whole sections alone, Bill Bruford drums with wit and startling precision, and David Cross’s violin and viola work as a counter-soloist, weaving around Fripp’s lines. Free improvisation, hard rock and chamber delicacy sit side by side, sometimes in the same minute. Because so much of it was captured on stage, the album has a restless, unrepeatable energy no studio session could produce. It also has the flaws of live music: passages that circle, endings that fray. That is the bargain, and it is worth it.

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The songs

‘The Great Deceiver’ opens at a sprint, an ironic swipe at commercialism whose lyric Fripp helped write after watching souvenirs being sold in Vatican City. ‘Lament’ considers fame, and ‘The Night Watch’ is a small, beautiful essay on Rembrandt’s painting. ‘Trio’ is the album’s marvel: improvised on stage, and so hushed that Bill Bruford played nothing at all, sitting with his drumsticks crossed over his chest because he judged that the piece needed no drums. The band thought the decision so important that they gave him a co-writing credit. Side two brings the improvised title track and ‘Fracture,’ eleven minutes of gathering menace.

Reception and legacy

Rolling Stone judged the album as stunningly powerful as the band’s debut, singling out Bruford and the way David Cross’s violin answers Fripp’s guitar. Robert Christgau was less sure, and some admirers of Larks’ Tongues in Aspic hear a step sideways rather than forward. Time has been generous: ‘Fracture’ and ‘The Night Watch’ are now counted among the finest things King Crimson recorded. The title comes from the opening lines of Dylan Thomas’s radio play Under Milk Wood, and the sleeve is by the painter Tom Phillips. David Cross was voted out of the band soon afterwards; Red, and then silence, followed within the year.

The verdict

Starless and Bible Black is not the first King Crimson album to hear, but it may be the most thrilling for anyone who has already met them. Knowing how it was made changes everything: what sounds like composition is often four musicians inventing in real time before an audience who never made a sound on the record. Come for the fury of ‘The Great Deceiver,’ stay for the stillness of ‘Trio’ and the long, coiling menace of ‘Fracture,’ and hear improvisation raised to the level of architecture.

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