POP REVIEW;Double A Trio And the Music Debates

In a recent interview in Guitar World magazine, Robert Fripp explained the epiphany that led him to reform his influential art-rock band, King Crimson, as a double-trio (two drummers, two guitarists, and two people playing the Chapman stick, which combines guitar and bass). It occurred when he was driving down a street with a school on the left and a church on the right. Here were two institutions intrinsic to human history but also teaching lessons that conflict with each another.

On Monday night at the Longacre Theater, in the first of a series of five concerts that concludes on Saturday, King Crimson worked toward reconciling conflicting musical styles. In past incarnations of the band, which formed in 1969 and regrouped this year after a decadelong hiatus, this meant melding improvised and composed music using blues-rock, modal jazz, early-20th-century classical music and electronic technology.

But as a double-trio, each pair of players came to embody a dialectic. Mr. Fripp sat stiffly in the dark at the back of the stage, navigating his guitar with an extreme economy of hand and arm movement, while Adrian Belew stood in the spotlight in front of him, producing the sounds he wanted from his guitar with flashy moves like warping the neck and punching the strings. On percussion, Pat Mastelotto played like a slightly ambitious rock timekeeper while Bill Bruford complicated the sound with a repertory of jazz and avant-garde frills and flourishes. And on Chapman stick, Trey Gunn played rogue and rookie to Tony Levin's large arsenal of techniques and instruments. When building their mannered progressive-rock, they no longer seemed to be using divergent styles, but rather to be working together to create a smooth, linear sound with pointillistic playing.

Since it last performed in New York in June, the band has become much more fluid, and has grown comfortable with the songs on its new album, "Thrak" (Virgin). The instrumental "Vrooom," with Mr. Fripp's beautiful computer-processed guitar picking, and the languorous "Walking on Air," with Mr. Belew abandoning his arty squawk for Bryan Ferryesque smoothness, held up to older songs like "Elephant Talk" and "Frame by Frame."

In the new "Dinosaur," a wry comment on King Crimson's old-timer status, one could hear the sound of Adrian Belew's pick striking his guitar strings with a dry, brittle crack. But what came out of the speakers was digitally altered into a lush, orchestral string sound. This ability to turn simple and ordinary and into the erudite and unusual made Monday's concert a welcome return.