King Crimson
Discipline (E.G./Warner Bros.)
L.A.-based singer-songwriter Sophia James told us about her King Crimson love...
Sophia James: Respectfully, this is an impossible task. My favorite album depends on the day, my mood, season of life, location, whether I’m listening for poetry or production choice or musical arrangement or vocal prowess or groove or originality or...you get it.
So to answer this question I just wrote about 20 of my favorite album titles on pieces of ripped up paper, put them in a bowl, covered my eyes, and selected one at random.
Today it’s King Crimson’s Discipline.
It was the first prog rock album I’d really listened to at full attention. I don’t remember exactly where I was when I heard “Frame By Frame” for the first time, but I remember feeling like I had been struck by lightning and survived. The guitar tones. The racing percussion. Adrian Belew’s soaring vocals. The DYNAMICS. It was unlike anything I had ever heard; it was one of those albums that made me go “oh, THAT’S what music can be????”
I think the whole album is a feast of emotional extremities and unexpected choices, whether within the individual tracks or across the entire project. I mean, after an electrifying intro of “Elephant Talk” and “Frame By Frame”, they immediately bring it to a tender place of “Matte Kudasai”. The guitar is so emotive that it literally sounds like a human voice. A perfect melody sings “She sleeps in a chair in her sad America”. So simple, so visually evocative. Then there’s the title track…there’s so much playfulness with musical patterns across the whole thing. It feels like each instrument is its own unique shape that locks together with the others and forms one perfect kaleidoscope.
Sophia James' EP The Wrong Shoe Theory is out now.
Photo by Sydney Michaelson
