- Superb Double Plus (A++) sound or BETTER brings the band’s Prog Rock Masterpiece to life on this vintage import copy
- Side two was sonically very close to our Shootout Winner – you will be shocked at how big and powerful the sound is
- We had a wide variety of Islands (Pink and Sunray) and UK Polydor pressings, and only two of those labels can have Hot Stampers based on the many shootouts we’ve done over the years
- On a pressing as good as this one, turned up to seriously loud levels, the horns blasting away on “21st Century Schizoid Man” are guaranteed to blow your mind
- As is sometimes the nature of the beast with these vintage LPs, there are marks that play – those on “I Talk To The Wind” and “Moonchild” are especially bad – but if you can tough those out, this copy is going to blow your mind
- 5 stars: “The group’s definitive album, and one of the most daring debut albums ever …. it blew all of the progressive/psychedelic competition out of the running, although it was almost too good for the band’s own good — it took King Crimson nearly four years to come up with a record as strong or concise.”
- We’ve recently compiled a list of records we think every audiophile should get to know better, along the lines of “the 1001 records you need to hear before you die,” but with less of an accent on morbidity and more on the joy these amazing audiophile-quality recordings can bring to your life. In the Court of the Crimson King is a good example of a record many audiophiles may not know well but should get to know better
In the Court of the Crimson King is an album we think we know well, one that checks off a number of important boxes for us here at Better Records:
- It’s a personal favorite
- It’s a Must Own rock album from 1969
- It’s a Masterpiece, as well as their magnum opus
- It’s a Demo Disc for big speakers that play at loud levels
- It’s our pick for King Crimson’s best sounding recording
- It’s part of the core collection of well recorded rock & pop albums
Over the many years of doing shootouts for this album, we’ve listened to a lot of different pressings. Right from the start we could hear that no domestic pressing was, or was ever likely to be, remotely competitive with the best Brits.
Most later reissues — domestic or import — were as flat and lifeless as a cassette, although we admit that some were clearly better than others.
What The Best Sides Of In The Court Of The Crimson King Have to Offer Is Not Hard to Hear
- The biggest, most immediate staging in the largest acoustic space
- The most Tubey Magic, without which you have almost nothing. CDs give you clean and clear. Only the best vintage vinyl pressings offer the kind of Tubey Magic that was on the tapes in 1969
- Tight, note-like, rich, full-bodied bass, with the correct amount of weight down low
- Natural tonality in the midrange — with all the instruments having the correct timbre
- Transparency and resolution, critical to hearing into the three-dimensional studio space
No doubt there’s more but we hope that should do for now. Playing the record is the only way to hear all of the qualities we discuss above, and playing the best pressings against a pile of other copies under rigorously controlled conditions is the only way to find a pressing that sounds as good as this one does.
Size and Space
Some copies of the album just sound small — they don’t extend all the way to the outside edges of the speakers, and they don’t seem to take up all the space from the floor to the ceiling. In addition, the sound can often be recessed, with a lack of presence and immediacy in the center of the soundfield.
Other copies — my notes for these copies often read “BIG and BOLD” — create a huge soundfield, with the music positively jumping out of the speakers. They’re not brighter, they’re not more aggressive, they’re not hyped-up in any way, they’re just bigger and clearer.
We often have to go back and downgrade the copies that we were initially impressed with in light of such a standout pressing. Who knew the recording could be that huge, spacious and three dimensional? We sure didn’t, not until we played the copy that had those qualities, and that copy might have been number 8 or 9 in the rotation.
Think about it: if you had only seven copies, you might not have ever gotten to hear a copy that sounded that open and clear. And how many even dedicated audiophiles would have more than one of two clean British original copies with which to do a shootout? These records are expensive and hard to come by in good shape. Believe us, we know whereof we speak when it comes to getting hold of original British pressings of Classic Rock albums.
One further point needs to be made: most of the time these very special pressings just plain rock harder. When you hear a copy do what this copy can, it’s an entirely different – and dare I say unforgettable — listening experience.
What We’re Listening For On In The Court Of The Crimson King
- Energy for starters. What could be more important than the life of the music?
- Then: presence and immediacy. The vocals aren’t “back there” somewhere, lost in the mix. They’re front and center where any recording engineer worth his salt would put them.
- The Big Sound comes next — wall to wall, lots of depth, huge space, three-dimensionality, all that sort of thing.
- Then transient information — fast, clear, sharp attacks, not the smear and thickness so common to these LPs.
- Tight punchy bass — which ties in with good transient information, also the issue of frequency extension further down.
- Next: transparency — the quality that allows you to hear deep into the soundfield, showing you the space and air around all the instruments.
- Extend the top and bottom and voila, you have The Real Thing — an honest to goodness Hot Stamper.
Side One
21st Century Schizoid Man
I Talk To The Wind
Epitaph
Side Two
Moonchild
The Court Of The Crimson King
AMG 5 Star Rave Review
The group’s definitive album, and one of the most daring debut albums ever recorded by anybody. At the time, it blew all of the progressive/psychedelic competition (the Moody Blues, the Nice, etc.) out of the running, although it was almost too good for the band’s own good — it took King Crimson nearly four years to come up with a record as strong or concise.
Ian McDonald’s Mellotron is the dominant instrument, along with his saxes and Fripp’s guitar, making this a somewhat different-sounding record from everything else they ever did. And even though that Mellotron sound is muted and toned down compared to their concert work of the era (e.g., Epitaph), it is still fierce and overpowering, on an album highlighted by strong songwriting (most of it filled with dark and doom-laden visions), the strongest singing of Greg Lake’s entire career, and Fripp’s guitar playing that strangely mixed elegant classical, Hendrix-like rock explosions, and jazz noodling. Lineup changes commenced immediately upon the album’s release, and Fripp would ultimately be the only survivor on later King Crimson records.
This is a true Demo Disc in the areas of sound reproduction shown below. Other records with these qualities can be seen by clicking on any of the links.