Also this issue: Oh, the Humanity International male Vikter Duplaix says no way, computer. -A.D. Amorosi Jig Stars Danú turns heads by doing the same old thing. -Mary Armstrong Big Entrance PJ Harvey's pal John Parish makes Animals Move. -A.D. Amorosi Review: Common, Gang Starr, Talib Kweli, Floetry -Elisa Ludwig Review: Philadelphia Orchestra -Peter Burwasser Ike -Patrick Rapa Danielle Howle -M.J. Fine The Eyeliners -Sam Adams

March 6-12, 2003

musicpicks

King Crimson

Reinvention. For most rock elders, it's a scarier proposition than hair plugs. For iconoclastic guitarist Robert Fripp and King Crimson -- his small, intelligent unit of stalwarts: guitarist/singer Adrian Belew, drummer Pat Mastelotto, bassist Trey Gunn -- constant innovation and reinvention is the bloodline. It propels Fripp from the Mellotronic morass of Larks' Tongues in Aspic through to the now-absent polyrhythmic interplay of Bill Bruford and Tony Levin to the present of The Power to Believe (Sanctuary). In the same sci-fi vein that marks Tool's aggro-ambience, Fripp's stripped King matches the immaculate-garage gruel of the previous CD (the clamorous ConstrucKtion of Light) to unlikely, non-nostalgic bits of his past. As King signatures like flittering syncopation and loops of sharded orchestral guitars fly below Believe's radar, it's several reprised sections of the title that merge all generations of Fripp -- the a cappella oddity of pre-Crimson days, the orchestral overdrive of his most famous moments (In The Court Of ) and the seared metal guitars that prove Robert Fripp's influence will be as pertinent 10 years from now as it was in 1969. How many rock elders -- reinvented or not -- can say that?

Fri., March 7, 8 p.m., $45, Tower Theater, 69th and Ludlow sts., Upper Darby, 215-336-2000.

—A.D. Amorosi