Teatro Echegaray Málaga Spain

It’s a cautious opening to the second night in Malaga as the Travis & Fripp set slowly takes shape. The first few tracks involve a slow circling around each other, as though each musician were weighing the moment, the most propitious opening.

On The Emporium Fripp gives Travis the space to develop a series of cyclical motifs confining himself to smudges of texture and atmospheric shading. By Steel Eyes, Velvet Heart, Fripp getting all twangly via a spiffy new setting from his rig hovering beneath some of Travis’s soprano notes like some sci-fi apparition.

If the first twenty minutes of the concert involve a certain amount of patient negotiation and good-mannered give and take, then the remaining thirty-five minutes - from Soaring and Gliding through to the last notes of Duet for the End of Time - represent a master class in empathy, invention and vision. There’s a greater sense common purpose displayed; two musicians acting with one voice often indistinguishable from another.

This is music filled with blissful reverie and, as on Lamentation, mournful reflection. Though not quite constructed to the same epic grandeur of the Lamentation which appeared on the Live in Coventry Cathedral CD, this is as stirring as it is formidable.

Robert’s diary reports: “A re-vibed approach to the set, a call on the spot, some things planned were not, and vice versa. But a strong performance. The suffering from last night is now redeemed.”