The Brondesbury Tapes

Moving into 93a Brondesbury Road in 1968, Peter Giles, Michael Giles and Robert Fripp’s North London flat soon became a centre of creative activity for the trio.

Feeling energised after the frustrations they’d experienced while recording The Cheerful Insanity of Giles, Giles & Fripp at Decca, they soon established their living space into a home studio (consisting of one Revox reel-to-reel tape machine) which was frequently visited by ex-Fairport Convention vocalist Judy Dyble, a then unknown Ian McDonald and, later in 1969, by Greg Lake.

The musical output from that period is often mentioned as providing King Crimson fans with a glimpse into the early incarnation of the band’s sound and composition.

The popular Crimson ballad ‘I Talk To The Wind’ appears here in two early versions with one featuring Peter Giles on vocals and the other with Judy Dyble on vocals.

Parts of Fripp’s ‘Suite No.1’ would later be transformed into ‘Prelude: Song Of The Gulls’ and his ‘Why Don’t You Just Drop In’ became, with new lyrics, ‘The Letters’ for 1971’s album “Islands”.

The Fripp-composed ‘Passages of Time’ is also of interest, consisting of a driving bolero rhythm and a middle-eight section that would later find its way onto King Crimson’s “In the Wake of Poseidon” as ‘Peace - A Theme’.

Although the audio quality is limited in places due to the original source, the 2025 remastering by David Singleton has improved the sound significantly compared to previous issues.