The final day of the Travis & Fripp Iberian adventure ended in Barcelona. In the early section of Emporium Theo Travis’s gliding flute, full of hope and a poignant sense of flight brings to mind the mood of hope and reverie created by John Cameron’s score to Kes. Away from such lofty wheeling, Travis’ soprano sax on Rotary Symmetrical bites into harder, sardonic territory creating a harsher environment that dovetails perfectly into Fripp’s Crimson-like chords with both cutting out in a dramatic, cliffhanging fashion. As someone who was present on this particular evening, it’s interesting to see how a straight up and down rock club with somewhere between 300 and 400 punters could be transformed into a space conducive to reflection and contemplation albeit for an hour or so. Soaring And Gliding capture that process here as did the languid Blue Calm. Yet even the more speculative rumination of the two distinct improvs carved out their own very different grounds for engagement. To these ears, present then some nine years ago, and listening now, nine years later, this is a pretty essential performance. After the show, Fripp noted in his diary, “A very different audience to those of our other performances. This was not a cultural-event audience, with wives & their mothers in need of constant explanation from husbands as to what on earth this bleeping & droning was about; more musos, young guys, rockers. And they listened. This made for a very different kind of performance. Music without listening, without being heard, is not quite music. But what does the performer know of their performance?” Rotary Symmetrical and Soaring And Gliding from this concert appeared on the 2012 Travis & Fripp album, Discretion.
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