Warthur When it comes to the monster King Crimson boxed sets I've covered so far, I'd put The Road to Red on a tier above Sailors' Tales and the Larks' Tongues box, but below that of Starless.

In terms of sound quality, whilst it's a bit less consistent than the Starless box, it's nonetheless streets ahead of most of the material on Sailors' Tales and Larks' Tongues. In terms of the live sets presented on the box, there's obviously a lot of fantastic performances here, but I'd say that by and large the performances on the Starless box have the edge on them, with some exceptions.

In addition, there's a more nuanced reason why I think Starless is a five-star set whilst The Road to Red is more four- and-a-half stars. On the European tours covered in Starless, King Crimson were typically the headliners, with set lengths giving them space to sprawl. Conversely, in many of the US dates chronicled here, their improvisations where greatly curtailed due to the fact that they were working as a support act. Consistently, the better gigs here are the longer concerts where they were headlining and had the space to really get into it.

It's still a fantastic collection for anyone who loves mid-1970s King Crimson (and the new mix of Red is great), but I just don't think it hits five stars.

Warthur As well as providing the album itself in its original mix and in the updated mix by Steven Wilson and Robert Fripp (a fairly tasteful, light update which doesn't mess too much with perfection), this continues the run of Crimson boxed sets which come stuffed with live sets from the relevant lineup.

This box is hampered somewhat by two factors: Jamie Muir really wasn't in the band that long, disappearing shortly after the studio album was done, and the band didn't do many soundboard tapes during this era (the Guildford Civic Hall gig being a happy exception). That means that most of the live sets here hail from audience cassettes, which are somewhat varied in their quality as you might imagine.

Some of them are pretty good - with the Zoom Club and Hull Technical College tapes at least sounding better than Earthbound, and offering full sets. (It helps a lot that the chaotic music that Crimson presents here suffers less from a lo-fi presentation than, say, the material that the Islands-era lineup were performing.) And the Beat Club tape is a live-in-the-TV-studio affair, so that sounds great.

At the other end of the spectrum, the Glasgow Green's Playhouse and Portsmouth Guildhall tapes are really not good - to the point where even the high quality of the music itself couldn't save them as it did with some of the other audience tapes. Still, overall the good outweighs the bad in this collection, and it's well worth it if you love the Larks' Tongues material, want some really massive improvs featuring that lineup, and have a tolerance for sometimes dodgy sound quality.

Warthur This is one of the best-sounding live concerts available from the Starless & Bible Black era of King Crimson, thanks to being recorded using mobile studio facilities. Eight of these tracks were on the Great Deceiver boxed set, but here you get the entire set. The band are on top form and it all sounds very excellent; at the same time, it's worth noting that the set is also available as part of the Starless boxed set, which you're likely to at least be considering if you're keen enough on this period of King Crimson to delve into full concert recordings like this.

Warthur A decent live recording of the last date on King Crimson's 2003 US tour in support of the Power To Believe Album. Like most live sets that have been salvaged from this tour, the setlist is heavy on then-recent Crimson material - The Power To Believe, plus material from The ConstruKction of Light rendered more interesting thanks to extensive live refinement, plus a pinch of VROOOM. In addition, we get the encores here - a little Elephant Talk to remember the 1980s lineup of the band by, and a spot of Red to represent the band's original 1969-1974 run.

With more recent King Crimson live sets largely being exercises in exploring the band's entire back catalogue, Live In New Haven might represent King Crimson at the furthest extent of their musical experimentation into uncharted territory, prior to this (still valuable and interesting) round of exploration of their legacy that they've turned to in the intervening decade or so.

Warthur Right at the tail end of King Crimson's European tour of 1974 - followed by the grand slog through the USA which culminated in David Cross leaving the band and, shortly after, Robert Fripp dissolving the group following the recording of Red - this Kassel gig, captured on decent-quality soundboard tapes, finds the band in an aggressive mood, like they're roaring to see the finish line just up ahead. The set is incomplete - it cuts out partway through Fracture - but the quality of what you get is superb and it's only this incompleteness which stops it getting five stars. Then again, if you're digging this deep into this phase of the band's history, you may as well get the Starless boxed set - which includes this plus all the other surviving soundboard tapes from this tour.