an artist to produce a cover for Lizard. When she suggested creating medieval miniatures, a passion of hers, Sinfield "went for it" and commissioned her to do the job. Barris recalled that she did not hear the music until after the album's release, but worked from the lyrics Sinfield had given her. She cited the Lindisfarne Gospel and Très Riches Heures du Duc de Berry illuminated manuscripts as inspiration for her work. Release Released on 10 December 1970 by Island Records (catalog no. ILPS 9141), Lizard reached number 29 in the UK Albums Chart. The album was released in the United States and Canada by Atlantic Records on 3 January 1971 (catalog no. SD 8278), where it would reach number 113 in Billboard. Lizard was released by Atlantic at the same time as two other albums on the label featuring ex-King Crimson members: Emerson, Lake & Palmer's debut album (featuring Greg Lake), and the lone release by Ian McDonald and Michael Giles. The album had CD releases in 1989 and 2001, each newly remastered by Fripp at the time. The newest version was released in October 2009, containing a 5.1 Surround Sound mix on DVD-Audio, created by British musician and producer Steven Wilson in collaboration with Fripp, as well as a new stereo transfer based on the surround mix. Reception Since the album is more jazz-inflected sounding than many of the band's other works and many of its tracks idiosyncratic, responses towards the album have been varied since its release. Music critic Robert Christgau rated the album a B−, saying that the "jazziness" of the album projected a "certain cerebral majesty" but criticized Peter Sinfield's lyrics, qualifying them as "overwrought". In his retrospective review, AllMusic's Dave Lynch described it as, "Seamlessly blending rock, jazz, and classical in a way that few albums have successfully achieved, Lizard is epic, intimate, cacophonic, and subtle by turn – and infused with the dark moods first heard when "21st Century Schizoid Man" and "Epitaph" reached listeners' ears the previous year." Classic Rock reviewer described Lizard as "a decidedly Miles Davis-influenced hodgepodge of classical and jazz influences brought to their logical, near-chaotic end" and defined its music "mind-bending, unclassifiable creative stuff." Robert Fripp has been very critical of the album, calling it "unlistenable" and lovers of it as "very strange". However, he revised his opinion upon listening to Steven Wilson's surround-sound mix of the album