Thread, the new album by Travis & Fripp notches up another good review and we’ve got a copy to giveaway to a lucky DGMLive visitor.
All you need to do to win a copy of this latest release is tell me the name of the Theo Travis album that also features a guest appearance from Robert Fripp (which you can find out by taking a look at Theo Travis’s discography if you don’t already know it).
Once you’ve done that send an email to competitions@dgmlive.com with THREAD in the header (lest you be lost in a sea of spam) and don’t forget to include your postal details. I’ll be announcing the winner on Friday 25th July so get yer skates on.
You can check out Theo’s blog about how the album came about. First up there’s this item from the latest edition of The Wire…
Travis And Fripp
Thread
Panegyric CD
Robert Fripp is one of the few guitarists who has a unique and recognisable style,and so it’s strange to hear a flautist playing in a way that sounds uncannily like him – as Theo Travis achieves on the exquisite “The Apparent Chaos of Blue”. Travis feeds his flute though a similar delay system to Fripp;s Frippertronics setup, and on this piece he employs some Fripp-style intervals in his playing.
Fripp himself, meanwhile, starts off with gently buzzing notes before setting up loops of radiant synthetics, which he embroiders with delicate lines (which are oddly enough, reminiscent of his playing on the improvised section of King Crimson’s Moonchild from 1969). Fripp has utilised these MIDI-generated “soundscapes” ( as he terms them) extensively – for well over a decade now, both in the latterday incarnation of that group and solo, and although texturally interesting at times, “As The Snow Falls” shows they can easily become cloying and overbearing.
On Thread, the musicians’ near static improvisations recall the way Fripp & Eno explored space on 2005’s The Equatorial Stars, and Thread shares some of that album’s brooding quality. Although the ten minute “Pastorale” might be assumed to evoke airbrushed visions of Elysium, it actually begins under glowering clouds. Travis’s Terry Riley-style sax loops build over the mid-section and there is a brief but animated guitar and flute duet to close. Thread might not be a release of massive significance, but it is substantial and rewarding. That it was recorded in just one day back in 2007 shows that Travis and Fripp are particularly empathetic, and augurs well for future collaborations.
Mike Barnes
And finally you can hear a couple of tracks from the album over on Robert’s myspace site and should you feel that yet more is needed, you can read my take on the record over on the blog.
