Our first music pick for The 2024 PopCult Gift Guide is a new vinyl pressing (also available on CD in a deluxe boxed set) of King Crimson’s 1974 masterpiece, RED. This one’s for the more daring music lover on your holiday shopping list.

This is a double 200gm vinyl LP pressing housed in gatefold jacket. This 50th anniversary 2LP edition takes the music to new levels of clarity & power. RED was one of the earliest mixes undertaken by Steven Wilson in 2009 & King Crimson was the first of a number of classic bands & artists to be mixed by Steven so it’s entirely appropriate that he return, some 15 years later, to take the album into the Dolby Atmos era.

While mixing the album for Dolby Atmos, Steven also prepared new stereo & 5.1 mixes. Those new stereo mixes appear on LP1 of this 2LP set.

LP2 consists of a complete album’s worth of Elemental Mixes by long-time King Crimson producer (& band manager) David Singleton – using the original multi-track recordings to present a very different audio picture of the album, with greater separation of instruments & utilising many elements recorded for, but not included in, the original mixes.

This LP features a unique insight into Bruford’s percussion overdubs in place of “Providence” and an extended intro to “Starless.” This version of “Starless” is so striking that I played the entire 14-minute song on Radio Free Charleston in episode 200 last week.

As King Crimson biographer Sid Smith puts it in his new notes for the album: “David Singleton’s elemental mixes pull the veil aside on the original sessions and act as a kind of alternative account, a Red that could have been, revealing the different passes and takes that the band undertook as well as those of Collins, Charig and McDonald as they engaged with the material”.

RED, the final album by the 1970s incarnation of King Crimson was quite the departure.  The band’s strong leader, Robert Fripp, stepped back and let vocalist/bassist John Wetton (pre-ASIA) and drummer, Bill Bruford (formerly of YES and a mainstay of the 1980’s Crimson) run the show.  For the first time the band was something of a Democracy, and it worked wonders for this swansong that closed the first chapter of King Crimson. Epic numbers such as the title track and “Starless” stand among the greatest works of Progressive Rock. Some folks have suggest that RED is ground zero for what became Prog-Metal.

You should be able to order this 2 LP Anniversary edition of RED from any local record shop, or you could take the easy way out and get it online  from Amazon (it’s actually cheaper at Walmart).

If you want a whole hell of a lot more for about the same price, I recommend the Deluxe boxed set that includes two CDs + two Blu-Rays. This box has the contents of the 2 LPs on CD, but also features those completely new Dolby Atmos, 5. 1 DTS-HD Master Audio Surround & Stereo mixes by Steven Wilson in full Blu Ray glory along with a generous bonus. RED was recorded immediately after King Crimson’s final US tour of 1974 & the anniversary edition reflects that by including all three Hi-Res Stereo mixes of the live album USA in it’s full concert versions. Also included are a quintet of audio restored bootlegs being issued on disc for the first time, alongside a bootleg of the band’s final US concert in New York in 1974 which Robert Fripp claimed was: “the first gig since the 1969 Crimson where the bottom of my spine registered ‘out of this world’ to the same degree.”

Either anniversary edition of RED is highly recommended as a gift for the fan of Crimson, Prog-rock or just adventurous music in general. As a bonus, fans of ASIA might be thrilled to hear Wetton taking on more challenging material.