Larks' Tongues in Aspic, Part One

Fripp said Part One was conceived as the start of a King Crimson performance and Part Two as the end. It begins with an African mbira played by Muir over a glockenspiel pattern for about three minutes, before Cross enters with a staccato violin ostinato. A six-chord riff follows, with two-tone brass lines played by Muir on car horns, and a passage in 7/8 with Wetton's bass through a wah-wah. In the middle is a quiet "water music" section, a duet for violin and hammered zither by Cross and Muir. Bruford later described it as a perfect moment of stillness "right in the middle of all this mayhem".

Much of it came from full-band improvisations that began in 1971, and Cross said it was "grown" rather than written. The Islands-era group had recorded an early version, A Peacemaking Stint Unrolls, later released as a bonus track. The piece is the first of five parts spread over thirty years. Part Two, the album's closer, has a sole writing credit to Fripp and a main riff that came out of a 1972 rehearsal at the Richmond Athletic Club in London. PopMatters called it a "roller-coaster of wrath and control". Part Three closed Three of a Perfect Pair in 1984, Part Four appeared on The ConstruKction of Light in 2000, and Level Five on The Power to Believe in 2003 is the fifth.

PopMatters' Sean Murphy ranked Part One the eighth best progressive rock song in 2011 and fifteenth in 2017, while Louder Sound's Marc Malitz placed it at 42. The band played it from 1972 to 1974, usually in a seven-minute cut, and revived it in 2014 as a regular in the set until 2019, with the violin passages played on guitar and the solo given to Mel Collins on flute. Dream Theater and Murmur have covered Part Two.