King Crimson is an interesting animal, to say the least. Upon entering the scene in 1969 with the lush In the Court of the Crimson King, the band established itself as a sort of epitome of British progressive rock by way of arrangements and instrumentation that owed as much to classical music as rock music. This lasted for a couple of years and a couple of lineup changes, until the sound of the band took a heavier turn around 1973 with the Lark's Tongues in Aspic album, and then the landmark Red in 1975.
This, too, did not last, and Crimson went on what appeared to be a permanent hiatus in 1975. After several solo projects and collaborations with the likes of Brian Eno, Fripp conceived of a new group with former bandmate Bill Bruford and two Americans - bassist Tony Levin, who Fripp had worked with on Peter Gabriel's solo albums, and guitarist Adrian Belew, who had worked with Frank Zappa, David Bowie, and Talking Heads. This band was steeped in the strict musical philosophies Fripp had been developing over time, and as such, was to be called Discipline. But then fate intervened, to hear Fripp tell the story, and the band became King Crimson again, of its own accord. Naming the resulting album Discipline instead, the group wove in and out of complex linear structures, bizarre lyrical turns, and random electronics from both percussion and guitar, all done to great effect.
When this version of the band started getting complacent in 1984, after three albums, Fripp sent them packing in what again looked like the end of the band. However, after recording and touring with David Sylvian in 1993, he had yet another vision for the band in the post-Nirvana, post-Nine Inch Nails musical landscape. In the words of drummer Bill Bruford, one of the six members of the new Crimson, "you will have to own a black t-shirt in order to listen to this music." The concept was that of a double trio: two drummers, two bassists, and two guitarists, with the eighties band augmented by drummer Pat Mastelotto and Trey Gunn on Chapman Stick and Warr Guitar. This Crimson recorded the EP VROOOM in 1994, followed by the full-length THRAK in 1995. The conventional wisdom on this version is that they combine elements from each of the three discrete bands before them. Rather than disband in the sextet's downtime, Fripp then split the band up into smaller "fractalizations," called ProjeKcts, which he described as a sort of research and development for the full band, which was supposed to reconvene. In actuality, the ProjeKcts served to pare the band back down to a quartet, with Tony Levin and Bill Bruford leaving the group, and the new unit being a bit more focused on power than the freewheeling spirit that marked most of the incarnations that involved Bruford.