The ‘Beat’ album by King Crimson was my entry point to the band in 1982 – somewhat taken by the fusing of art rock and the Talking Heads connections, buying that album was something of an educated guess but one that paid off. ‘Beat’ was the middle album of a trio from the early 1980s and this ‘Sleepless’ single featured here was the lead-off single from the third part of that trio, 1984’s ‘Three of a Perfect Pair’. By this stage of the game, the band clearly had some ambitions to have something of a go at single chart success and ‘Sleepless’ took aim with a smoothed-out, funked up, sleek-lined rhythmic juggernaut of a sound that was fashioned into different mixes across the parent album as well as 7″ and 12″ releases, aided and abetted by celebrity mixers of the day, Bob Clearmountain and the more dance-groove focussed François Kevorkian – and in so doing, leaving us with some vinyl-only version craziness some 41 years on from its original release.
