Record #765: In This Style – Craft (2019)

I’m a devout believer in the importance of local music. Much of my life has been guided by the community I’ve gained from the local and regional music scene, and I’ve invested much in my life to its success. Perhaps the biggest reason I moved back to South Bend from Chicago was to help build the local scene here.

In that regard, one of the constant misconceptions I deal with is the idea that local music is necessarily of a lesser quality than “real” music. And while it’s true that there’s no shortage of lackluster bar bands hacking their way through Eagles covers bringing down the average, some of the most beautiful music I’ve experienced has come from the craftsmanship of people in my own community.

Take for instance In This Style, a seven-piece prog rock outfit that delivers the kind of hypnotic, mind-melting, sonic alchemy you’d expect to be played in stadiums or huge open air festivals, not small venues and dive bars.

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Record #434: King Crimson – In the Court of the Crimson King (1969)

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The sixties were a weird time. And it had the music to match.
Every band, from the Beatles to the Byrds to the Beach Boys, dabbled in making some of the weirdest music of their career. Every band had at least one psychedelic album—even perennial rock and roll heroes the Rolling Stones. But by 1969, most of them had moved on from the weirdness of psychedelia.
But nobody told King Crimson that.
Their debut, In the Court of the Crimson King, isn’t just a coattail-riding, trend-following copycat that happens to be late to the game. It is a magnum opus of psychedelia that is still rightly celebrated today. The opening track, “21st Century Schizoid Man” is a balls-to-the-wall freight train of horns and guitar noodling (that Kanye West sampled, strangely enough). It’s seven and a half minutes of frenzy.
But as it fades, the record never revisits that bombast again. Which it doesn’t need to. Most of the record is driven by subdued, exploring guitar lines and Mellotron. At times, it flirts pretty heavily with jazz fusion (high praise). “Epitaph” and “The Court of the Crimson King” are epic ballads that manage to capture a dramatic scope that most psychedelic acts were devoid of. And it does that through extended arrangements and experimental composition.
While many psychedelic bands would eventually evolve into progressive rock, In the Court of the Crimson King manages to ride the line between them. As a result, this record is an absolute gem.