All About Jazz's John Kelman has reviewed Travis & Fripp's 3-disc release, Between The Silence...
Travis & Fripp, while focusing largely on their own collaborative compositions and empathic spontaneous engagements, do draw on a couple of Crimson compositions for inspiration. In the Court of the Crimson King's haunting "Moonchild" was a strong extemporaneous vehicle, its original 12-minutes largely built upon free group improv once the initial three-minute song was sung. Here, however, it's even more a jumping off point for spontaneous creation. While the Broad Chalke version evokes just the first half of the phrase corresponding to Peter Sinfield's original lyrics "Call her moonchild," the Bath Festival version references the entire line, "Call her moonchild, dancing in the shallows of a river." In both versions, the phrase is looped and otherwise processed to create a soft contextual cushion, with Travis' Ambitronics-drenched alto flute more dominant at Bath, while Fripp's heavily overdriven and sustained tone turns the piece more angular (albeit only briefly) in both performances.
You can buy Between The Silences from Inner Knot (USA) and Burning Shed (UK/EU)
