BEAT – A Superstar Lineup in the Footsteps of Eighties King Crimson, Now in Zagreb Too (2026)
BEAT
Tuesday, 7 July 2026, 8:30 PM – 10:45 PM
Zagreb / ŠRC Šalata / Croatia
Some things only come around once in a lifetime. If the current European tour by BEAT — a superstar prog/art rock outfit dedicated to the legacy of prog-rock pioneering immortals King Crimson — is one of those things, there’s no other option but to catch at least one show on this tour. We’re talking about a quartet of legendary names, led by two former Crimson members: Adrian Belew (vocals, guitar) and Tony Levin (bass guitar). Then there’s the incredible Tool drummer Danny Carey, and on guitar none other than Steve Vai himself (Robert Fripp reportedly gave him pointers beforehand on what he must do, what he cannot do, and how far he’s allowed to deviate from the KC originals in reinterpretation). The mere fact that someone like Steve Vai is on board automatically draws crowds to these shows, even if you’ve never heard of BEAT (Vai is a massive name worldwide, and once word gets out he’s stepping on a stage, you just go — wherever his guitar is going to wail, you follow). BEAT play a full two hours of King Crimson’s eighties repertoire, with an intermission in between! Sometimes dreams do come true. This time you didn’t have to go far for one. From Slovenia there were two options: a grassy courtyard at a castle in Udine (Italy, Friuli), or Šalata in Zagreb. The Zagreb date suited us far better!
So if Uncle Fripp isn’t interested anymore, thankfully the others are still very much in the game. And what a musical company this is! Superlatives run out in an instant, and the moves and choices made by BEAT hint that the vocabulary we normally use to describe live performances simply hasn’t invented the right words yet to meaningfully capture what happens at a BEAT concert.
Šalata in Zagreb wasn’t sold out this time, but it was very well attended. The floor was once again laid out with seating, as is the practice at all BEAT shows — and as it used to be at King Crimson concerts, when was that exactly? A long time ago — their last European shows were played in the summer of 2019.
The band took the stage at half past eight in the evening. With the exception of Carey, the other three were dressed in the matching style that Crimson actually wore at their eighties shows. The albums Discipline (red), Beat (blue), and Three of a Perfect Pair (yellow) came alive in all their glory. Extraordinary!
BEAT used this tour to put extra emphasis on material from the third album Three of a Perfect Pair, and in the first set they strung together no fewer than five tracks from it in a row — because Ade and Tony know very well that King Crimson went on hiatus shortly after that album came out, meaning it never got many chances to live on a stage. The album has two very different faces. The first half is represented by tracks carrying the pop accessibility of the eighties; the other face is strikingly experimental. That’s where Dig Me, Industry, and especially Larks’ Tongues in Aspic (Part III) landed — the last of which closed the first set. That piece in particular was radically extended, and the band allowed themselves a generous helping of free-spirited experimentation, made possible by the inherent openness of the original. This is the kind of approach the word ‘progressive’ captures in its fullest sense — when you have no idea where the band is heading, where it’ll take you, carry you off. Each member gets enormous space for their musical genius to stretch its wings to the full. Anything less simply doesn’t make sense, because this is the only thing that delivers the real, true joy of performance and playing. Steve Vai, as expected, packed the instrumental experimental stretches of the show with a massive array of guitar tricks and sounds that are entirely his own. Ade is an essential building block — his guitar playing is unique in the musical universe. Without that approach you simply cannot picture the Crimson albums he appeared on. Levin is Levin. The eighty-year-old bassist who has few peers once again stunned on the Chapman Stick. He played a bass painted with the Three of a Perfect Pair album artwork — the same one he used in the eighties. At certain points he slipped additional picks onto the fingers of his right hand, making the tapping even more intense. All three musicians also run pedals — synthesizers. The floor is littered with pedals. And then there’s Danny Carey. How precise, refined, and versatile this drummer is. He brilliantly fractured established rhythmic structures and layered in the unexpected — something that can only come from the challenge of genuine experimentation at its core. Adrian Belew still possesses an exceptional voice at 76. A voice that is one of the defining signatures of King Crimson’s sound from the eighties all the way to 2003, when Power to Believe (the last true KC studio album) was released.
The eighties Crimson incorporated a vast array of Asian and African traditional music motifs into their identity, and the same goes for their rhythmic language. Belew even brought a shot of punk energy and a dash of lucidity into the mix! There’s also the musicality of pop rhetoric, and in their eighties reinvention Crimson drew from new wave trends led by the work of Talking Heads, Japan, Roxy Music. And they threw it all into a melting pot from which a unique, eclectic art rock was born — one that belongs exclusively to the eighties Crimson. It was precisely this total transformation and the simultaneous expression of a newly born eclecticism that drove Fripp and company forward. And we relived all of it again on the Zagreb stage.
Ahhh,… a 15-minute intermission.
The second set opens with Waiting Man and The Sheltering Sky. A dose of the world music rhythms and melodies mentioned above, woven into a unique face of progressiveness. The whole thing built so intensely that you could call it a kind of mantra. Steve Vai was stunning, and it was right in The Sheltering Sky where he added the most of the characteristics that place him in a unique spot in the musical universe. His moment culminated in hitting the highest possible note on his guitar (as in the original track), which Vai followed up in the style of his perfectly crafted stage theatrics — in an incredibly satisfying and entertaining way. Carey sophisticated and patient, as the track rests on building a vivid atmosphere constructed from interlocking layers of sound, with excellent support from the pedal synthesizers being played (guitar and bass synths). Insane. Then comes the ‘awakening’ with one of the most beloved tracks from the Crimson eighties era — Sleepless — where the band once again confirms their staggering rhythmic tightness. After that, more ‘easier listening’ fare: Frame by Frame, the gentle Matte Kudasai, then the sardonic Elephant Talk — where you always wait for that jungle squawk of whammy-bar animal calls — and all that angular wit belongs, naturally, to the sparkling Adrian Belew.
The dramatic Indiscipline closed the concert. This is where Danny Carey stepped to the center and showed why he’s considered one of the hottest drum masters on the planet right now. Can you imagine if BEAT decided on the next tour to grow into a multi-headed stage beast, with Mastelotto and Harrison joining the fold? “I repeat myself when under stress”… as if that weren’t already more than enough. Lyrics full of intrigue, and the music follows suit. In the most bizarre and delightfully unhinged way. And in terms of performance and sound — in the glow of total perfection. It ends with Adrian’s exclamation: “I Like It!”
The obligatory encore delivered Red! The track that meaningfully caps King Crimson’s first era with a 1975 riff that is, frankly, straight-up metal. Adrian bowed to Bruford and Fripp. Then came another long-missed track from the album Discipline. The blistering Thela Hun Ginjeet — Adrian’s clever scrambling of the original title Heat In The Jungle (Fripp didn’t like the original title) — brought the encore to a close.
In Zagreb, BEAT delivered the elusive eclecticism of King Crimson’s music in all its greatness. In the exceptional reinterpretation of King Crimson’s originals, all sense of time and space vanished. The magic that only musical geniuses of this caliber can recreate took over — these four grandmasters united into a single musical body. In seamless, flawless complementarity, reaching sublime stage perfection! One of a kind and unrepeatable. Since Fripp has clearly decided never to fire up King Crimson again, BEAT are here to heal the wounds of prog-rock connoisseurs. Let’s hope BEAT keep going for at least a few more tours. There is still plenty of material released by King Crimson between 1980 and 2003 that deserves to live (again) on a stage!
Author: Edita Klemen & Aleš Podbrežnik
Photos: Aleš Podbrežnik
BEAT – setlist:
first set
1. Neurotica
2. Neal and Jack and Me
3. Heartbeat
4. Sartori in Tangier
5. Model Man
6. Dig Me
7. Man With an Open Heart
8. Industry
9. Larks’ Tongues in Aspic (Part III)
second set
10. Waiting Man
11. The Sheltering Sky
12. Sleepless
13. Frame by Frame
14. Matte Kudasai
15. Elephant Talk
16. Three of a Perfect Pair
17. Indiscipline
—encore—
18. Red
19. Thela Hun Ginjeet
