King Crimson, one of my very favorite bands, is about to start getting the Re:Collection treatment. I spend an inordinate amount of time thinking and writing about this band and its staple member, guitarist Robert Fripp (who refuses to be considered its leader even though he really is) so why not inflict it on everyone, right? I've got a lot of territory to cover, and, as I realize now, I'm sort of diving in deep here with this one - we'll catch up later as I get into other eras of the band.

It looks like the rumor mill, if such a thing can exist in the relatively small, enclosed environment of us dorky prog fans, is starting up about the latest incarnation of King Crimson, due to start work (and some touring) next year for a new album to follow later that year or in 2009. The rumors are that the band may be a five-piece for the first time in ages - decades, actually - and as I've watched the talk and suspicion mount over the past few weeks, it has turned the rumors are true, there is a fifth member, and it looks like it's a second drummer.

Ten years ago I would have been extremely excited about this. Not just excited, ecstatic. Of all the incarnations of this band - the historic first album lineup with Greg Lake on vocals, the short-lived Jamie Muir/Bill Bruford percussion-battle era of Larks Tongues in Aspic, the Bible Black/Red era, the Discipline line-up years - I found the Thrak-era enthralling because of the dual-drummer (well, dual-everything) format.

The double-trio, so named because of its unusual lineup of two guitars, two basses (well, things along those lines - bass and Stick-like touchstyle instruments,) and two drummers, was meant to create an ungodly amount of noise in the most spectacular way possible. Unlike, say, the Allman Bros., who used their two drummers to make one strong, united rhythm section, King Crimson used its two drummers in a push-pull arrangement, playing off of each other, tugging at rhythms, often splitting up and going head to head to do things that one drummer could not. It was one of those concepts that belonged more to jazz than to rock and which, at the time - the mid-90s, right in the middle of the minimalistic grunge and alternative movements - garnered a lot of snickering from the press for being excessive and indulgent. As Fripp has pointed out, the band often seems to take a lot of abuse at the time it does something unusual, only to see that move take on more importance when history has a chance to look back on it - and that has indeed been the case. The double-trio was a fantastic, boundary-pushing live band, if nothing else, and a decade later many of us are gaining a new appreciation from the many live releases from this period.