Their Best Track?

This really will sound like Crimso Heresy but I think I have come to realise that, as magnificwent it is, Starless is not their best track.

Yes, it has a superb theme, a great vocal and those Mellotron strings, as well as a long slow build up to what must be one of the greatest codas in all of recorded music...but it's not my favourite.

For me, it's Fracture.

This one has a pull on me that I can hardly describe. It seems to move somewhere. It has a discordant, even paced edge. There is a phenomenal moto perpetuo movement within it where all the assembled pieces of the band detach and then reattach. It has a recapitulation. And then it thunders into what might be the band's most powerful moment, with not only a sense of purpose but an completely memorable melody and a real drive which is underpinned by Wetton's most stupendously muscular playing. And then it tops itself off, screeches and dies in a final exclamation which feels like the death of just about everything.

When I play it (as I did last night) the coda haunts my imagination for at least the next day if not beyond.

I first became aware of this piece when I was 16 and have unreservedly loved it since then - over 40 years. That band had some magical moments, but this one one feels like an out of body experience sometimes.

Discuss!