Discipline by King Crimson

Discipline, King Crimson's eighth studio album, arrived on E.G. Records in 1981, and it's a comeback that sounds nothing like a reunion. Robert Fripp had put the band to sleep seven years earlier; now he was back with Bill Bruford on drums and two Americans: Adrian Belew, a singer and guitarist who'd served in Frank Zappa's and David Bowie's bands and toured with Talking Heads, and Tony Levin, a session bassist and Chapman Stick man Fripp knew from their work with Peter Gabriel.

The band produced it themselves, and the old prog grandeur is gone. In its place: two guitars locking together like the gears of a clock, Levin's Stick purring underneath, Bruford snapping out the time, with gamelan, minimalism, post-punk and new wave all feeding the machine. "Elephant Talk" and "Thela Hun Ginjeet" twitch and bristle, "Matte Kudasai" drifts. This lineup made two more albums, Beat and Three of a Perfect Pair, and its blueprint pointed toward what would later get called post-progressive rock.

Written with AI assistance from RockLists chart data, MusicBrainz and Wikipedia.