King Crimson

rlw

Saw them at the Palladium on Friday.  Fancy seats in the front circle, right opposite the PA.  The sound was dreadful, too bright, too loud, no compression at all and gain turned up to 11 where possible.  I swear you could hear the keyboard players hands moving before he touched a key.  My ears are still ringing.

In its favour, I was impressed that the placing of all the instruments in the PA was spot on, so when the front left drummer brushed a cymbal with his hand, that's where you heard the sound, likewise the sax and the guitars.   Who needs three drummers though?  I think that was part of the problem in that you needed the other intruments so loud to be heard over the drums.  Oddly dissatifying evening really.

boogieman

That’s a shame.

They’re a great band but I’m struggling with the current three drummers thing too. Why do they need three? In fact, why did they need two in the Double Trio days? Bill Bruford did a perfectly good job by himself, I’m not sure an extra drummer really adds much.

Having said that I saw them play live when they’d just released Larks Tongues with Jamie Muir on percussion and they were absolutely epic. Great shame that he didn’t stay longer, mad as a box of frogs, but he was incredible to watch. 

Funkfingers

For the 2015 tour performance in Cardiff, I had a second row seat, almost on the centre line of the venue. From there, my ears were nicely aligned with both the public address system loudspeakers and the lower portion of the drum kits themselves. This definitely altered the overall sound balance for the worse.

At the time, I did not notice any phase correlation issues but there ought to have been some. 

rlw said:

Who needs three drummers though?

IMO, that could be politics.

Pat Mastelotto is Tony Levin's cohort in Stick Men. Gavin Harrison drummed on the Jakszyk, Fripp, Collins album, A Scarcity Of Miracles. The other two drummer/keyboardists are there as multi-instrumentalists. What they play depends on what is required for each song.