Staff Recommendations: King Crimson – In The Court of The Crimson King

Today we bring you another excellent collectors item hand-picked by the staff of eil.com. Our stock addition manager and all-round prog aficionado, Syd, has chosen an early pressing of King Crimson’s magnum opus, In The Court of The Crimson King.

“After rightfully hat-tipping the The Wilde Flowers, Soft Machine, Arthur Brown or even early Floyd & Caravan for their parts to play in making important steps beyond 60s psychedelia, and frankly transcending what The Nice, Procol Harum, and The Moody Blues brought to the table, In The Court of The Crimson King has to mark the undeniable true dawn of progressive rock.

“This is the one that had the attack, the real contrasting darkness and light, the unsettling balance of chaos and order and the ambiguity that any definitively daring piece should offer, and it’s crucial that this is the one that landed just before the main onslaught that followed over the subsequent few remarkable years from Comus to Gentle Giant to the Krautrock and Canterbury movements and can stake its claim as the archetypal pioneer of musical exploration in a rock setting.

“The artwork itself is colossal among the host of iconic cover designs from the era, no small achievement in a time where album sleeve art had the potential to become historic in music culture. Its representation of the sound of this record perfectly portrays the equally harrowing surrealist music with nothing short of suitably devil-like temptation. A formidable work of forced nature and the benchmark of breaking conventional chains, you could call it the genesis but that name was used elsewhere. These guys just took it to a whole new level.”

King Crimson In The Court Of - 1st - VG vinyl LP album (LP record) UK KNCLPIN583199

1969 UK first issue 5-track stereo LP on the smooth pink Island label with white ‘i’ logo [A2/B4 matrices], matt gatefold picture sleeve with lyrics inside. The sleeve has a some minor scuffing to the edges but has no splits of rips, however the striking artwork is not compromised & the colours are still vibrant. The vinyl shows only minor evidence of play with some light surface scuffs, overall a very good example and an ideal play copy ILPS-9111

Find out more about this fantastic collectors item over at eil.com

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1 Comment

  1. It’s the first two Crimson lps for me; Crimson King and Poseidon. Love ’em, have so since they came out. Inventive, musical and pleasing tonality. Fripp, Lake, McDonald et. al. And don’t forget the awareness at the time of Pete Sinfield, his delivering of the lyrics.

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