Review Summary: A King Crimson staple and one of the greatest live albums of all time.
People talk about 'Stop Making Sense', some talk about 'Rust Never Sleeps', I say look no further than 'Absent Lovers'. This behemoth of a live album can hold its own when put up against any live album in existence.
If you want to get a feel of 80s King Crimson but don't know where to begin, just skip all their 80s albums and put on this bad boy. It's essentially a best of 80s King Crimson and dare I say most versions on here *** on their respective studio counterparts, especially the material from Beat and Three Of A Perfect Pair.
Oh and you even got some Larks and Red sprinkled in here. Amazing innit?
This album captures the last performance of their 1984 tour. The line up consists of 'Robert Fripp', 'Adrian Belew', 'Tony Levin' and 'Bill Bruford'. Everybody is on point here but what do you expect from what's essentially a super group of expert musicians. Even then it's baffling how they are able to pull of all of these songs live and in a lot of cases improve on them.
The sound of this live album is amazing. 'Brad Davis' and 'David Singleton' did an amazing job with that.
The band start off with 'Entry Of The Crims', an ambient, doomy improvisation which transitions into 'Larks' part 3', one of my favorites on here and a worthy sequel to parts 1&2.
The show continues with 'Thela Hun Ginjeet' which of course is absolutely amazing, Belew talks a little bit and we go straight into 'Red', which makes the already great album version pale in comparison.
After that we take a breather with 'Matte Kudasai' and an incredible version of 'Industry'.
Following that we get 'Dig Me' and 'Three Of A Perfect Pair' where Fripp throws in some screeching guitar arpeggios. 'Indiscipline', another favorite of mine, marks the end of Disc 1.
Anyway, Disc 2 is just as good but you get the gist. Everyone should jam this. It's one of their absolute must-haves. Truly one of the greatest live albums of all time.
Highlights:
Larks' Pt. 3
Thela Hun Ginjeet
Red
Industry
Indiscipline
Frame By Frame
Larks' Pt. 2
Discipline
