Abstract
Akin is an ‘imitation’ of the track Fracture from the 1974 album Starless and Bible Black by King Crimson. The track is a long instrumental with an unusual (for rock music at least) opening derived from whole tone harmony; the group build an irresistible momentum as the music progresses, managing to combine harmonic and timbral innovation with a sense of abandon that only a genuine rock group can produce. My version of the piece compresses the duration to seven minutes whilst maintaining the exact proportions of the original. Moreover the musical character of each section mirrors the original track. The only place where the King Crimson ‘template’ is ignored is the ending in which the violin breaks into a frenzied cadenza that spins out of control. Akin was composed in 2008 for Darragh Morgan and Mary Dullea who gave the first performance at the National Portrait Gallery, London.