Stick Men: Three Musical Lifetimes, One Fearless Progressive Power Trio
Article & live photos by Andrew Banks
Tony Levin, Pat Mastelotto and Markus Reuter discuss Let’s THRAK Again, the continuing influence of King Crimson and the recordings every adventurous listener should hear
Some bands are built around songs. Others are built around personalities, chemistry or a specific sound. Stick Men are built around possibility.
The progressive power trio of Tony Levin, Pat Mastelotto and Markus Reuter operates in territory where conventional roles begin to disappear. Bass becomes percussion. Guitar becomes orchestration. Drums trigger samples, loops and electronic textures. Three musicians generate a wall of sound that can feel enormous and physical one moment, then intricate, atmospheric and nearly weightless the next.
This is music that draws from progressive rock, art rock, experimental music, ambient composition, improvisation and progressive metal without settling permanently into any one of them. It can be heavy without becoming blunt, technically complex without turning into an exercise, and deeply connected to King Crimson without living in its shadow.
Stick Men combine extraordinary musicianship with something even more important: the willingness to take risks.
Now the trio is back on the road behind Let’s THRAK Again, its first full-length studio album in a decade. The title acknowledges the musical history shared by Levin and Mastelotto, both longtime members of King Crimson, but the album is not an attempt to recreate the past. It is a statement from a band still committed to experimentation after nearly two decades together.
How Stick Men Began
The roots of Stick Men reach back to Tony Levin’s 2007 solo album Stick Man, a collection created around the Chapman Stick with contributions from his King Crimson rhythm-section partner Pat Mastelotto.
The album soon developed into a touring concept and then a working band. The original lineup featured Levin, Mastelotto and fellow Chapman Stick player Michael Bernier. When Markus Reuter joined in 2010, the modern identity of Stick Men came into focus.
Levin and Mastelotto already possessed a musical connection forged inside one of the most demanding and influential bands in progressive music. Reuter added another dimension: a composer’s sense of architecture, a sound designer’s curiosity and an instrument he helped create because nothing already available could fully express what he wanted to hear.
The trio has since performed around the world, releasing studio albums, live recordings, improvisational projects and reinterpretations of selected King Crimson material. Their concerts often stretch far beyond the boundaries of their recorded work, making improvisation and real-time musical communication central to the Stick Men experience.
That freedom is possible because each player brings not only extraordinary technique, but a lifetime spent learning how to listen.
Tony Levin: The Musician Beneath the Music
Tony Levin’s career touches an almost impossible range of musical history.
He has been an essential member of Peter Gabriel’s band since the beginning of Gabriel’s solo career and has served through multiple generations of King Crimson. His recorded work also includes collaborations with John Lennon, Paul Simon, Pink Floyd, David Bowie, Lou Reed, Alice Cooper, Yes, James Taylor and countless others.
Levin played bass on Paul Simon’s “50 Ways to Leave Your Lover,” contributed to John Lennon and Yoko Ono’s Double Fantasy, appeared on Pink Floyd’s A Momentary Lapse of Reason, and became part of the rhythmic and emotional foundation of Peter Gabriel recordings including “Sledgehammer,” “Big Time” and “Don’t Give Up.”
He is also a member of BEAT, alongside Adrian Belew, Steve Vai and Terry Bozzio, performing music from King Crimson’s landmark 1980s period.
Yet a résumé, even one that extraordinary, does not fully explain his value as a musician.
Levin has a rare ability to make unusual musical choices feel completely natural. He can play a supportive bass part that almost disappears into the song, then shift to something melodic, percussive or harmonically disruptive without losing sight of the music around him.
That combination of imagination, restraint and service to the song has made him one of the most trusted musicians of his generation.
In Stick Men, Levin primarily plays the Chapman Stick, the instrument that gave the band its name. The Stick is played through a tapping technique that allows both hands to operate independently across bass and melody strings.
In Levin’s hands, the Chapman Stick can function as bass, guitar, percussion and counterpoint at the same time.
His playing gives Stick Men its low-end foundation, but it also allows him to move between musical roles instantly. What begins as a bass line can become a chordal pattern, a second melody or an interlocking rhythmic figure with Reuter.
Pat Mastelotto: The Drummer as Sound Designer
Pat Mastelotto first became widely known as the drummer for Mr. Mister, the band behind the major 1980s hits “Broken Wings” and “Kyrie.” For many musicians, success on that level would become the defining chapter of a career. Mastelotto used it as a launching point.
His work after Mr. Mister moved steadily toward more adventurous territory. He recorded or performed with XTC, David Sylvian, The Rembrandts and numerous experimental and progressive projects before joining King Crimson in the mid-1990s.
Mastelotto entered Crimson during the THRAK period, when the band operated as a “double trio” with two guitarists, two bass and Stick players, and two drummers. His partnership with Bill Bruford placed acoustic and electronic percussion inside one of the most rhythmically complex configurations in rock history.
Over time, Mastelotto developed a drumming language that moves far beyond the conventional drum kit. His setup combines acoustic drums, electronic pads, samples, loops, found sounds and processed percussion.
Mastelotto does not simply keep time beneath the music. He builds environments around it.
He can provide a massive rock foundation, create polyrhythmic tension or introduce sounds that alter the entire emotional environment of a piece.
His many projects include O.R.k., TU, TU-NER, Mastica, KOMARA and The Mastelottos. Across those settings, he approaches the drum kit less like a timekeeping device and more like an electronic-acoustic orchestra.
Inside Stick Men, Mastelotto is the force that holds the music together while constantly pushing it somewhere unexpected.
Markus Reuter: Building the Instrument for the Music
Markus Reuter is a Berlin-based composer, guitarist, producer, educator and instrument designer whose career stretches across experimental rock, ambient music, contemporary composition and improvised performance.
Initially trained as a pianist, Reuter later studied Robert Fripp’s Guitar Craft and learned to play the Chapman Stick. His search for a more personal instrument eventually led to the development of the U8 Touch Guitar, created through design work with luthier Ed Reynolds and later refined through Touch Guitars in Germany.
The U8 is not simply an unusual guitar. It is designed around touch-style playing, allowing Reuter to perform independent parts with both hands while accessing an enormous tonal range.
Within Stick Men, Reuter can occupy the space of a guitarist, keyboardist, orchestrator and sound designer. His parts may supply melody, harmony, looping atmospheres or dense layers of processed sound. At other times, he and Levin create interlocking patterns that make it difficult to tell where one instrument ends and the other begins.
When the instrument Reuter needed did not exist, he helped create it.
Reuter’s larger body of work is remarkably prolific. In addition to his solo recordings, he has worked with Centrozoon, TU-NER, TRUCE, Europa String Choir, Ian Boddy, Robert Rich and Tim Bowness, along with many other experimental artists.
He is also deeply involved in teaching and developing touch-guitar technique. His role is not limited to mastering an instrument. He is helping define what that instrument can become.
Let’s THRAK Again: History Without Nostalgia
The title Let’s THRAK Again immediately evokes King Crimson’s 1995 album THRAK, one of the defining works of the band’s double-trio era.
Levin and Mastelotto both appeared on that record, but Stick Men’s new album is not a reworking of THRAK. It is a collection of new compositions, with the most direct connection appearing in the title track, which develops the counter-rhythmic idea behind King Crimson’s original piece “THRAK.”
The distinction matters.
Stick Men respect their history and understand that many listeners first discovered Levin and Mastelotto through King Crimson. The trio regularly performs selected Crimson material, but its identity is not dependent upon nostalgia.
Let’s THRAK Again sounds like the work of musicians who have absorbed their history and then continued moving.
The album also reflects an unusual creative reality. Levin lives in New York, Mastelotto in Texas and Reuter in Berlin. Opportunities for all three musicians to occupy the same studio for weeks at a time are limited. When they do come together, they often prefer to perform rather than disappear into a recording room.
Their solution was to build a collaborative method around distance.
Instead of one member sending the others a completed composition, the musicians exchanged files with intentional openings. Sections remained unfinished so another member could write, rearrange, alter the structure or introduce a new direction.
That process allowed the album to carry the personality of all three musicians rather than sounding like a collection of individual compositions performed by the group.
The Tone Culture Interview
Ahead of the next stretch of the Let’s THRAK Again tour, Tony Levin, Pat Mastelotto and Markus Reuter spoke about bringing the new album to the stage, creating music across continents and the King Crimson question that never completely goes away.
Which songs from Let’s THRAK Again are being featured live? Are there additional King Crimson or THRAK-era pieces fans can expect to hear?
Tony Levin: We’re doing a bunch of tracks from the new release. They’re exciting, and we’ve found that playing them live is a good challenge and, so far on the tour, fun for the audience. We also do a few Crimson songs in our set, knowing, of course, that a lot of our fans are Crimson fans too. The newest addition to the set is “VROOOM VROOOM,” from King Crimson’s 1995 album THRAK.
Pat Mastelotto: From the new release, we are playing “Komodo,” “The Well,” “Let’s THRAK Again,” “Brutal,” “Fandango” and “Swimming in Tea.” If we have enough soundcheck rehearsal time, we hope to add “Thief of the Dice” and “Bash Machine” as the tour continues.
Their answers reveal something important about the way Stick Men work. The recorded pieces are not fixed museum objects. They continue developing through performance. Arrangements change, rhythmic relationships sharpen and ideas discovered onstage may eventually influence recorded versions.
What was your favorite aspect of bringing the material together for Let’s THRAK Again?
Tony Levin: We’ve experimented with different methods of writing our music. It isn’t so simple when we live far apart. Markus lives in Berlin, and when we are physically together, we prefer to play live shows rather than spend weeks in the studio.
We trade files, but it is no longer just one person sending a completed song. We’ve found ways to leave room for the others to compose sections, so the result is that much of the material really has the flavor of all three of us.
Pat Mastelotto: When I got home from our West Coast tour in 2025, right before Christmas, I was able to update and redo the drumming on a few songs to reflect the new experience we gained from playing them live during that tour.
Because of that, there are variations in some of the recorded performances compared with what audiences heard on the last tour.
Markus Reuter: It is important to note that our album is not a reworking of THRAK, but a completely new work. The only direct reference is the new title track, “Let’s THRAK Again.” That composition is an elaboration of the counter-rhythm from King Crimson’s 1995 piece “THRAK.”
Reuter’s clarification places the album in its proper context. The title may open a door through history, but the music on the other side belongs to Stick Men.
The Question Everyone Asks
Any conversation involving Levin and Mastelotto eventually turns toward the possibility of another King Crimson project.
The band’s various incarnations created one of the deepest and most challenging catalogs in rock music. Even after its most recent touring chapter concluded, speculation about one more performance, recording or final gathering has never completely disappeared.
So we asked.
Are there any hints, updates or cryptic messages about possible future King Crimson projects or tours?
Tony Levin: Nope, nothing to offer, I’m afraid.
Pat Mastelotto: Nothing to add, but not afraid.
Brief, funny and definitive, at least for now.
The more important reality is that the musicians connected to King Crimson remain creatively active. Stick Men are releasing new music and touring internationally. BEAT is bringing the 1980s Crimson repertoire to another generation. Reuter continues expanding the vocabulary of touch guitar, while Mastelotto and Levin remain engaged across numerous collaborative projects.
The history is still alive because the musicians are still moving.
What Do Musicians Like These Listen To?
Stick Men attract the kind of listeners who care about musical context. These are fans who want to know how an instrument works, where a rhythmic idea originated and which records shaped the people creating the music.
With that in mind, we asked all three musicians to recommend one recording that every adventurous listener should have in a serious music collection.
Tony Levin: I’d say Glenn Gould’s Goldberg Variations by Bach. Ideally the 1955 version, though both are special.
P.S. I would have chosen The Shaggs’ Philosophy of the World if Adrian Belew hadn’t already done so when you asked him this question.
Pat Mastelotto: Samuel Barber’s Adagio for Strings. Or perhaps the Dot Wiggin Band.
Markus Reuter: I suggest Mike Oldfield’s Hergest Ridge, because everybody needs to hear it.
The selections are appropriately wide-ranging.
Gould’s 1955 recording of Bach’s Goldberg Variations is celebrated for its clarity, energy and interpretive daring. The Shaggs’ Philosophy of the World exists at almost the opposite end of traditional musical precision, becoming an enduring example of outsider music created according to its own internal logic.
Pat’s recommendations move from the devastating emotional gravity of Barber’s Adagio for Strings to Ready! Get! Go! by the Dot Wiggin Band, the solo project from a founding member of The Shaggs.
Following the death of producer and electronic-music visionary William Orbit in July 2026, Barber’s composition carries another connection. Orbit’s interpretation, released on Pieces in a Modern Style, transformed the work into something electronic, spacious and haunting without losing its emotional weight.
Reuter’s choice, Mike Oldfield’s Hergest Ridge, is equally revealing. Released after the enormous success of Tubular Bells, it is a more pastoral and understated recording that rewards patient listening. It also reflects the kind of long-form musical thinking heard throughout Reuter’s own work.
The trio’s collective vocabulary does not come from progressive rock alone. It comes from classical composition, electronic sound, outsider art, improvisation and a willingness to find value in music that refuses to behave conventionally.
A Band Still Inventing Its Future
It would be easy to market Stick Men entirely through the past.
Tony Levin and Pat Mastelotto are members of the King Crimson family. Levin has spent decades alongside Peter Gabriel. Mastelotto helped power some of the biggest pop records of the 1980s before becoming one of progressive music’s most inventive drummers. Markus Reuter emerged from Robert Fripp’s Guitar Craft tradition and has developed an international body of work around composition, collaboration and touch-style instruments.
Those histories matter, but they are not the entire story.
The real story is that three deeply experienced musicians still enter each project without pretending they already know the outcome. They exchange unfinished ideas. They allow live performances to reshape recorded music. They design instruments, tones and working methods around the demands of the composition.
That is what makes Stick Men more than a collection of impressive résumés.
Stick Men are not trying to prove that progressive music’s past was important. That argument was settled long ago. They are demonstrating that progressive music can still progress.
Next Tour Stop: Southern California
The next performance on the Let’s THRAK Again tour brings Stick Men to Southern California on Sunday, September 27, at the California Center for the Arts, Escondido.
It will be the trio’s fourth appearance in the greater San Diego area in four years, following two sold-out shows at the Bornemann Theatre in San Marcos and a near-capacity 2023 performance at The Grand Ritz Theater.
Stick Men
Sunday, September 27, 2026
7:30 p.m.
California Center for the Arts, Escondido
Tickets and event information: https://artcenter.org/event/stick-men