Live Review: The Crimson ProjeKCt - Fly By Night

The Fly By Night Musician's club, although sadly under serious threat, still has serious international pulling power. Such was very much the case tonight as The Crimson ProjeKCt took to the stage and performed for a humble, yet utterly devoted audience.

The band, which is a celebratory project comprising of the two trios Stick Men and The Adrian Belew Power Trio and allowing the founding members to both play their respective original tunes and those of their time in world-renowned progressive rock icons King Crimson, began their set with Markus Reuter laying down a soundscape with his heavily delayed, reverbed eight-string guitar, playing with effects on the laptop workstation beside him. After maybe five minutes of solid sweeping guitar improv, Pat Mastelotto sat down at one of the two full drum kits on stage, joining Reuter. Mastelotto's kit included a number of different synth pads and he began playing intricate fills and grooves on it with a mallet in one hand and bells in the other. To fill out these elaborate drum rhythms, the duo was eventually joined by Tobias Ralph on the second kit, playing corresponding grooves and rhythms, ideally complementing Mastelotto's.

The crowd at this point was applauding and nodding along in time, though the time was constantly and consistently changing throughout the show. The three remaining members, Tony Levin, Adrian Belew and Julie Slick joined them after a short while. Slick picked up the bass, Levin a bizarre twelve-string variation of a guitar, which was essentially just a neck and pickups – a Stick – and Belew a (slightly) more conventional guitar. Bizarre time signatures and arpeggios abounding, The Crimson ProjeKCt launched into a collective effort of cacophony and sonic enlightenment, Belew, not to be outdone by all of the unconventional instruments around him, going at his space-age-looking guitar with a power drill.

After the full band completed their very gradual and staggered unveiling, Belew immediately launched into the leading riff of Dinosaur, instantaneously received by the audience with excited applause. Reuter and Levin thenceforth played their strange and wonderful instruments primarily by tapping the frets rather than plucking the strings, Belew leading the band with his picking. So ensued a three-hour-long exploration of the musically weird and wonderful, trading between the “dual trios” and celebrating one of the most iconic progressive rock bands of all time.