Andrew Keeling

I stumbled onto Andrew's diary about three and a half years ago when I was looking for material about King Crimson. Andrew, an accomplished composer and music teacher, had written detailed analyses about the 'In The Court Of The Crimson King' album, as well as about other pieces by KC, and it was very interesting for me to read a musicologist's views on them.

Once I had got past KC, I read that Andrew had also written extensively about Nick Drake, which led me to re-examine N's music (I supposedly saw ND in 1970, supporting Fotheringay. His name appears in the diary which I kept, but I have no memory of him. I don't remember Fotheringay either), and from there I discovered Robin Frederick, but that's a story for another time.

In his diary, AK writes about music which he has heard, walks which he has taken (he seems to be an avid weekend walker), vignettes from his teaching world and hints about his own music. He frequently writes about ideas which come to him in dreams and reasonably quickly become turned into music which is performed here or there by some musician.

The difference between reading AK on KC and AK on AK is that I've heard King Crimson's music whereas I've never heard anything by Andrew. This allows the King Crimson material to resonate within me whereas the AK material falls on stony ears. Well, that was the situation until today when an almost unmarked disk of Andrew's material came into my sticky hands.

I should point out here that although I spent four years reviewing folk music for an online magazine (where the disks are sent for free), I stopped doing so a few years ago, and so if I ever write these days that I have obtained a disk, it means that I've paid for it with my own money. No free review copies anymore.

Obviously it's too early to be writing about AK's music, especially as my ears are not tuned to the instruments used (string quartet, lutes, viols and gothic voices). Whilst one might argue that a viol is just a synthesizer with a different type of patch, the truth is that this is real, contemporary music played by real, contemporary musicians, and appreciating it is going to take some time. From the little which I've heard, it's not going to be easy.