King Crimson乐团是艺术摇滚不老的长青树。自由爵士对乐队的影响非常大，所以他们从第一张专辑开始就将自由即兴当成通向完美音乐的唯一道路。他们的乐器演奏水平非常高，比如他们的鼓手一度是所有西方鼓手的偶像。对迷幻音乐和神秘主意的尊崇使他们早期的音乐充满了想象力和空间感。
 
King Crimson are a progressive rock band. Formed in London in 1968 (but featuring a transatlantic lineup since 1981), they're widely recognised as a foundational progressive rock group despite the band's own resistance to the label. The band has incorporated diverse influences and instrumentation during its history (including jazz and folk music, classical and experimental music, psychedelic rock, hard rock and heavy metal, New Wave, gamelan, electronica and drum and bass).
 
The band's line-up has persistently altered throughout their existence, with eighteen musicians and three lyricists passing through the ranks. The only musician to appear in every line-up of the band has been founding guitarist Robert Fripp, although others' tenures have sometimes extended for decades. Due to the number of musicians involved in King Crimson over the years (and the band's emphasis on creativity and on recruiting high-level players) the band is at the hub of a network of other bands and projects, and has been influential to many contemporary musical artists. The band has a large following, despite garnering little radio or music video airplay.
 
"Everything you've heard about King Crimson is true; it's an absolutely terrifying place." – Bill Bruford
 
The debut line-up of the band was influential but short-lived, lasting for just over one year. During 1970 and 1971, King Crimson were an unstable band, with many personnel changes and disjunctions between studio and live sound as they explored elements of jazz, funk and classical chamber music. By 1972 the band had a more stable line-up and developed an improvisational sound mingling hard rock, contemporary classical music, free jazz and jazz fusion before breaking up in 1974. They re-formed with a new line-up in 1981 for three years (this time influenced by new wave and gamelan music) before breaking up again for around a decade. Since reforming for the second time (in 1994), King Crimson have blended aspects of their 1980s and 1970s sound with influences from more recent musical genres such as industrial rock, grunge and loop music. The band's efforts to blend additional elements into their music have continued into the 21st century, with more recent developments including drum and bass-styled rhythm loops and extensive use of MIDI and guitar synthesis.
 
King Crimson's existence has been characterised by regular periods of hiatus (each of which have been initiated and concluded by Robert Fripp, considered to be the band's leader and motive force if unofficially). Fripp's own retirement from the music industry in August 2012, brought on by long-running legal and royalty disputes with Universal Music, suggested that King Crimson (as with Fripp's other musical projects) had finished, but a statement on his online diary dated 6 September 2013, announced the return of the band as a seven-piece unit. Since 1997 until the present day, various subdivisions of King Crimson have continued to pursue aspects of the band's work and approaches via a series of related bands collectively referred to as "ProjeKCts".