Call me a heathen if you like, but that extraordinary first album In The Court Of… apart, I’ve never really warmed to King Crimson: great chops but zero soul and even less swing; a regal debut, then a long decline into technocratic torpor. Crimo king Robert Fripp’s work outside of his group, on the other hand… well, I can really engage with that.

The pair of stunning mid-1970s collaborations with Brian Eno (No Pussyfooting and Evening Star), his League of Gentleman collective, the work with Davids Bowie and Sylvian, or, here, Exposure (which, bizarrely, apparently started life as a Daryl Hall solo album – but that’s another story) from 1979, all were worthy of attention, and far richer and more rewarding than Crimson’s output post-1970.

This mammoth box set – I got knackered just by looking at the contents, never mind listening to them – collects together a vast number of studio and live recordings from the Exposure era, one of the most fertile periods of a long and fecund career. It’s beautifully presented, replete with microscopic attention to detail and has every last fart and fragment Frippheads could ever desire. Whether or not this is ‘jazz’ is of course open to debate, but Crimson share common ground with certain members of the jazz-rock family, while Fripp himself grew up listening to, and playing, jazz; Ellington and Parker were as much his heroes as Scotty Moore and Hendrix, and many jazzers would understand and appreciate his approach to making music.

Exposures – given its sheer size, actually quite good value at around £170 – features the original album, outtakes, demos, experiments, hours’ worth of guitar loops, gigs, in-store appearances, radio sessions and much more. The music ranges from the disconcertingly angular to the outright avant-garde, ambient to AOR, and all points inbetween.

This is not a set to binge on: across the 32 discs there are several days’ worth of continuous listening. But it is a set that will furnish Fripp fans with a lifetime of listening pleasure. Highly recommended – if you’re up to it of course!