An album I've been jerking off here for a long time, but I hope it makes it onto the final list, so here's another push!
King Crimson's Red and In the Court of the Crimson King are codified classics, but Starless and Bible Black is their most experimental and ambitious set from their original late-60s/70s run, and as such is also the most divisive and debated amongst King Crimson fans and diehards. And it's not hard to hear why some may despise the album, either: certainly it's eccentricity is a point of contention, which is sort of implicit when half of the album's tracks are improvisations, but even the other songs shift in sounds and style at a moment's notice, and multiple times. I always try to sell the haters that its span, no matter how disjointed, is really that special something that makes S&BB such a fascinating album..."think of it as King Crimson's White Album!"
Starless and Bible Black certainly takes the cake for King Crimson's most fucked up album (in a good way, the bad sort of fucked up title would go to Cirkus). There's a few intersecting lines toed by KC's most adventurours and fruitful lineup throughout -the serene and the cerebral, chaos and constraint, between quaintness and confrontation - and from song to song (and even within the spans of those songs) those lines blur. It's disorienting, but in a marvelous way, perfectly executed by a band whose musical prowess is able to tie S&BB's many flavors and explorations into an aesthetic behemoth.
"The Great Deceiver" is at once a lean, coordinated strike and an sensory overload, w/ its caustic/kaleidiscopic intro and outro sonic barrages and sharp, stripped down verse passages; the album's (odd) lead single "The Night Watch" wraps all the band's previously wonky bardic-flavored-moments into a classy 4 minute package. SS&B also doubles as the 70's best live album, with live-improvisational cuts like "We'll Let You Know" (which should be soundtracking a Fantasia-like short with its explosive alchemy and comedic back-and-forth responses), tranquility-incarnate of "Trio," and the album's self-titled colossus. Sure, The Who were in their element bringing their studio material to the stage, but you'd be hard pressed to find another band who could create this sort of material from thin air.
King Crimson were among the avant-garde in the 70s, even if they unfortunately get bundled with the likes of ELP and some other wankers. Starless and Bible Black is the most compelling argument against conventional album craft the 70s has to offer.