Cadence And Cascade

This track has been made available as a free download and tribute to Greg Lake, who died on December 7th, 2016.

It’s a little piece of Crim history that nobody knew existed until DGM engineer, Alex ‘Stormy’ Mundy took a deep breath and dived into the vaults at DGM HQ. It’s likely that this version, taken from a quarter-inch reel to reel, was run off as a reference copy for Fripp at the time. Forgotten for nearly 37 years, the track was eventually made commercially available online in 2007 and on the 2010 edition of In The Wake Of Poseidon.

Cadence And Cascade was one of the abiding mysteries of King Crimson’s second studio album, being the only vocal track on the record not sung by Greg Lake but by a then-guesting, Gordon Haskell.

The common consensus from talking to all of the players involved in the making of In The Wake Of Poseidon, including Greg himself, was that Cadence and Cascade hadn’t been attempted by the time Greg left for ELP.

The discovery of the tape by Alex Mundy in 2007 proved the previously accepted history of the album was wrong, with the song recorded in the first sessions in March 1970 that yielded Cat Food and Groon.

On this outing Greg’s singing is a touch tentative and was probably a guide-only vocal, with the intention being to come back and finish it at a later session.

There’s no flute solo here because Mel Collins hadn’t yet been recruited to the band and Robert’s celeste overdubs would be added much later in the recording sessions at Wessex Studios.

The carefully listener will note that although the Giles Brother’s parts appear to be the same there are some significant differences in the guitar parts and Tippett’s piano near the end. Thus it seems likely that the backing tracks for Gordon Haskell’s rendition, which are the same as the Belew remix from 1991, were a remake recorded near the completion of the Poseidon sessions in May 1970.