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King Crimson to celebrate the 50th anniversary of their debut

By Paul Sinclair

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35

Steven Wilson remixes of In The Court of the Crimson King (again)

King Crimson‘s debut album In The Court of the Crimson King will be reissued for its 50th anniversary this year and 5.1 maestro Steven Wilson has newly remixed it for both surround sound and stereo.

This news has been reported on King Crimson’s official site with a screenshot of a twitter post (with Robert Fripp giving a theatrical ‘thumbs up’) which appears to have been deleted, but the upshot is that Steven says that while he was pleased with his 40th anniversary mix, it was one of his first classic album projects and he was “happy to have the chance to revisit it with the benefit of ten years experience”. He says that the new mix is a “significant improvement” on the 2009 mix and is “more faithful” to the original 1969 mix. Wilson also points out that audiophiles will be pleased that the new mix is 96/24.

There is no hint as yet as to how these new mixes will be delivered. Whether they will form part of a new box or will be issued as some kind of CD/blu-ray package.

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35 Comments

35 thoughts on “King Crimson to celebrate the 50th anniversary of their debut”

    1. Do they? Doesn’t that only apply to anything left unreleased after the 50 year limit? Anything released before the limit automatically qualifies for the revised 70 year term. And, personally, being terribly old-fashioned, I’ve never been sure what the complaint is with an artist – writer poet, songwriter, composer – being allowed to profit from their work…. and equivalence to plumbers (which is the tedious common comparison) isn’t correct: unless you believe a creative artist to merely be a technician in which case roll-on the Apple/ Spotify/ Amazon/ Netflix artist program, where all your favourite things can be churned out ad infinitum with small changes to maintain the interest, but not so large as to take a risk!

  3. This’ll be a big box. The original box (which I own), wasn’t as glorious as the others (which I also own) in terms of content (I’m talking booklet, and posters and stuff – obviously it had less discs).

    I’m not thrilled a new box is coming out – but that said, a lot of people are after that first box because it’s gotten scarce, so it’s great for them. Also, given this is a new Stereo and Surround mix, you’ll need both boxes to have them all (I personally think the current remixes sound great).

    They are finding things missed from the boxes – for example they just found a soundboard recording that should have been in the Larks box. Reissuing the COTCK box is probably the right thing to do if they have significant new content to add. Also, don’t forget, we’re getting a totally new box this year too.

    As always, we won’t know the actual value level until we hear the music, and have the contents in our hands.

  4. Never heard this album?, but I like the cover!, only joking of course!. I look forward to this, but I agree why not do something he hasn’t yet tackled ( ie, Yes albums from Going For The One – 90125 ) would be tremendous!!.

    2. Steven Wilson’s contract to remix Yes albums only covered the 1971-74 albums. As for other Yes albums, it is not certain that any of the multitracks exist, and even if they do, there may be issues with artist permission. Geoff Downes is opposed to a remix of “Drama”, but it is a moot point, because the multitrack tapes couldn’t be found.

    1. He’s also alluded to the fact that hi-res releases are just for people that insist they can hear a difference in interviews I’ve seen, so I expect he stated that 96/24 bit with a wry smile on his face.

  6. This actually one of the few topics I may be able to help with.

    The 40th anniversary box set came with the 40th anniversary mix, the 2004 “Original Master Edition” mix, “The Alternate Album” which consisted of alternate takes as well as a vinyl transfer from the original Stereo first pressing from Fripp’s personal copy, and a mono mix that was originally used for radio promotion.

    Most importantly (maybe?) was a disc called Live 1969 which had the July 5th, 1969 Hyde Park show as well as a show from November 22nd, 1969 from Fillmore East. The available shows from that line up on DGM Live that are not included in the box set are:
    July 6th, 1969 Marquee Club, London
    August 9th, 1969 Plumpton Festival, Plumpton
    September 7th, 1969 Jazz Club, Chesterfield
    November 21st, 1969 Fillmore East, New York City

    I am curious to see if there are any other unreleased shows. They recently unearthed a Jamie Muir era show that supposedly is the best quality out of the whole era.

    I am more interested to see what will be on the new Heaven & Earth box set, which will cover the 2002 and later era.

  7. They’ve already said that it’ll be part of a box set, aimed for around October. Blu-Ray with the 5.1 mix, cds with all available live shows of the period (apparently some more have been discovered since the Epitaph/40th boxed sets). Awaiting more details, but suspect they’ll include alternate cuts of the album tracks.

  9. I do wish Steven Wilson would spend his limited gun-for-hire time remixing albums new to 5.1 rather than ones he’s ALREADY DONE already…..

  10. Didn’t the 40th Box run to about 6 discs (5 CD and 1 Blu ray). It didn’t include any of the material in the 4 CD Epitaph set, so those two sets would give 10 discs as a starting point.
    Their reissue program has been excellent up to this point, so I don’t forsee any problems apart from reissue fatigue from fans that have multiple copies already.
    Personally I’ve been satisfied with the CD + DVD two disc sets up to now, as a lot of the live material in the boxes can be cherry picked on CD anyway.

  11. The forts In the court box was “light” in content compared to all the following ones, there was no blu-ray and it went out-of print so fast it is now awfully expensive on the second hand market. So I welcome this new release and I an eager to see what they could find to give to us.

  12. Loved the 2009 40th stereo remix. I’d long since parted with my DVD-A capability, so a 5.1 on Blu will happily cause me to open my wallet for a box set.

  15. So, “40th Anniversary 50th Anniversary 10th Year Remix Anniversary Deluxe Edition”?

    It better come with Steven Wilson action figure or I won’t buy it.

    1. I thought along the same lines, only I had images of a Robert Fripp action figure with no moveable limbs sitting on a stool with his guitar.

      I’m pretty close to being a King Crimson completist so I will eagerly anticipate this release. I have been loving the box set series.

  16. I’ll buy this, if it’s presented in CD format, possibly as a 2 disc set with bonus material. If a more extensive box set appears, I’ll have to consider reality. Depending on the contents, I have no interest in hearing live versions of these tracks, performed in various venues, 2, 3, 5, 6 times or more. I have a life. Much as I love this album, since the age of 15 in 1969, I don’t want to hear the same songs repeated, again, again, again, live. I might decide, laundry is more important. Or scrubbing my kitchen floor. Or, I’ll stop it all and play something else!

  17. The 50th anniversary is in October of this year, so maybe the reissue will coincide with this. A seminal album that I have on vinyl from way back when. I will buy the new reissue and listen to it back to back with my original to see if there is any noticeable difference.

  18. KC are releasing 50 rare/live tracks with commentary as digital downloads, one per week. Any idea if these will eventually be collected on a physical format? Since they’re charging $3 per track to buy, I’ve done the math and decided to hold off.

    2. Jon,
      The weekly track and commentary for the 50 weeks of 2019 are not $3 each.
      That might be the price other outlets are charging.
      They are available at £0.66 for MP3 and £0.84 for FLAC from DGMLive
      They are 11 weeks into the schedule, and already that’s 67 mins of music and 25 mins of commentary. That is edging towards a boxed set to house all fifty. Given the fact they opened up sales to other download/stream outlets makes me doubt these releases will be released in physical format.

    4. These are being released every few days on the King Crimson Youtube site so you can check them out before purchasing downloads. So far the back stories have been very informative and enjoyable.

  20. I will of course end up buying this. Whether I will be able to tell the difference is another matter. But the Steven Wilson original version released just before Christmas on vinyl sounds great but will that now be redundant?

  21. Hmmmm. I bought all the KC 40th anniversary editions, but I’m unconvinced that another 10 years means another significant increase in sound. The law of diminishing returns IMHO. I’ll pass on this one.

  22. They announced a couple of new multi-disc boxes about a month or so ago for this year so I’d assume they’ll be in one of those sets

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