King Crimson

Since 1968 · United Kingdom

Art rock

King Crimson formed in London in 1968 around guitarist Robert Fripp, and their first album the next year sounded like nothing else in rock… Their story

Full songs onSpotify Apple Music YouTube

See them on the map

Press ▶︎ to play

Loading…

It really plays! Press the middle

Who they shaped

In front, left to right: Guided by Voices, Wilco, Wire, The Dillinger Escape Plan.

The bigger the face, the stronger the proof: they said it themselvesreporteda critic, or widely accepted

Start here

In the Court of the Crimson King (1969)

Hear it onSpotify Apple Music YouTube

In the Court of the Crimson King opens with one of rock's great shocks: "21st Century Schizoid Man", a distorted vocal and a riff that lurches into frantic, jazz-speed runs played in unison. Then the record turns gentle, flute and mellotron carrying "I Talk to the Wind" and "Epitaph" into vast, mournful territory. The pull between brutality and beauty is the whole record. It's the album Colin Newman and Robert Pollard both name, years before either formed a band.

Sleeve notes

King Crimson

In the Court of the Crimson King · 1969

King Crimson formed in London in 1968 around guitarist Robert Fripp, and their first album the next year sounded like nothing else in rock: jazz-trained playing, mellotron orchestras, apocalyptic lyrics and sudden, violent loudness. Its opening song, "21st Century Schizoid Man", helped set the template for progressive rock, but the band never settled into it.

Fripp broke the lineup apart again and again, and each version reinvented the band: the improvising, heavy group of Larks' Tongues in Aspic and Red in the early 1970s, the interlocking guitars of Discipline in 1981, and more after. That restlessness is why they reach past prog: younger musicians from Wire's Colin Newman to Wilco's Nels Cline heard in them a band that would try anything.