Following Elton Dean’s illness and subsequent death, Theo had taken over from Elton as part of the Soft Machine Legacy project with John Marshall, Hugh Hopper and guitarist, John Etheridge with whom Theo had previously worked with on the Secret Island album.
In addition to playing sax, Theo Travis is a flautist, composer and producer whose name straddles the worlds of both progressive rock and jazz. With six CDs under his own name and a further two with his dark ambient electronica outfit Cipher, he has also worked with Gong, Porcupine Tree, Hatfield and the North, Bill Nelson, Harold Budd, Bill Bruford Mick Karn, and No Man. Recently he has recorded with David Sylvian and with the Tangent and toured the UK with his own bands.
Theo makes no secret of his appreciation of King Crimson’s music. The cover from his 2.a.m. album clearly plays homage to Red and one track, Sex, Food And Money (Part 2) was directly inspired by Fripp’s NY3 from Exposure. Nightmare in New York from the same album was similarly influenced.
His last album, Earth To Ether also featured an excellent cover version of 21CSM. Here’s a link to my review at the time. Also worthy of your attention is his other album, Heart Of The Sun - which I wrote about here. You can check out Theo’s own website for more details about the man and his music. In the meantime, here’s Theo’s Desert Island Crim.
1. 21st Century Schizoid Man (from ITCOTCK)– Well, hard to leave this one out. A classic amongst classics. The song that launched a thousand ships. Having loved this track for years I started playing it a few years ago as an instrumental with my jazz quartet and we subsequently recorded it on my latest CD “Earth to Ether”.
2. Epitaph (from ITCOTCK) – Such a beautiful, stately and powerful track. Greg Lake has never sounded better and particularly haunting moments are the mellotron and acoustic guitar entries.
3. The Letters (Islands) – A dark and bitter song with great saxophone in it both the solo and the layered parts. There is something about the sound of this track which is very individual. Haunting, tortured, menacing and beautiful. Love the “Impaled on nails of ice...” bit and the impassioned contrrasts between very loud and very quiet. An epic in miniature.
4. Easy Money (Larks Tongues in Aspic) – This album was I think the second Crimson album I bought and I loved its adventurousness, ambition and sense of mystery...and sort of strangeness with the violin and Jaime Muir percussion too. A very funky track but in a kind of understated, English way yet still really dirty.
5. Providence (Red) – Red is my favourite King Crimson album. As an improviser myself I love the way this starts and develops and builds and then gets down with the whole fuzz bass, drums and guitar groove. All the musicians seem absolutely on the same wavelength - to my ears a “perfect” improvisation. Very dangerous, very on the edge, very musical, very soulful, totally together and unique.
6. Starless (Red) – Actually a toss up between this and Fallen Angel, but I chose this in the end. I love the song bit, the build bit, the darkness of it, the explosive sax solo bit at the end and the structure and general vibe of it. Inspired guitar playing too. A total classic.
7. Elephant Talk (Discipline) – First track from the first album from the 80’s line- up and Adrian Belew, who I admire enormously, just flies out of the record. His humour, his charisma, his funkiness, his coolness, and his screaming guitar noises. Also his succinct, clever yet direct lyrics.
8. Frame by Frame (Discipline) – A perfect balance of head and heart. It is both engaging and moving A song full of searing melody and lush harmony but also the interesting 7/4 time signature and I love the guitar lines going in and out of phase and the well formed architecture of the piece.
9. Sex, Eat Drink Dream (Vroom Vroom) – This showed the 90’s line-up could come up with strong songs, but also something new with the duelling drummers sections. Very powerful, great groove and gutsy too.
10. One Time (Thrak) – For me the balance of interesting music, strong improvisations, and great songs is one of the enduring strengths of King Crimson. This is simply a beautiful and moving song that works perfectly and like Book of Saturday and Matte Kudesai warms up the overall feel of the album on which it appears
