- 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.