Album of the Day

King Crimson: THRaKaTTaK. One of the major criticisms of progressive rock is that it is "pretentious" or overly "self-indulgent." If that was ever the case, it certainly is with THRaKaTTaK. When the double-trio variant of Crim hit the road, they imrpovised nightly around the title track from THRAK. If the two improvs on the live album from that tour weren't enough (and you know they're not!), you can get this collection of improvs totaling nearly an hour of "explicit live instrumental imrpovisation" (so says the sticker on the cover). Aside from a couple of cool moments and one of the all-time great song titles ("Mother Hold the Candle Steady While I Shave the Chicken's Lip"), this is mostly just a collection of self-indulgent noodling. In the words of one USENET critic, they "have their heads too far up their own arse." Scares the neighbors, tho'.