ROBERT FRIPP & THEO TRAVIS: THREAD

Fripp's fixation with these "new age" ambient music is anything but recent, since it started with his collabs with Brian Eno in No Pussyfooting in the first half of the 70's and later Summer Stars. He has sporadically come back to this uneventful type of music, and more recently he teamed up with wind instrumentalist Theo Travis, known to progheads for his replacement gigs inside Gong and Soft Machine Legacy. As usual in this type of album, it is mostly the duo and with reduced instrumentation: saxes & flutes for Theo and guitars for Robert (no mention of Frippertronics or loop, but I suspect that it is an omission and there are certainly some synth layers. Coming with a yellow cloud bland (dare I say boring?) artwork, it cannot deceive as it is rather aptly presenting the musical contents of this disc. "Nothing to write home about" summarizes fairly well this album made from nine dual "compositions" (not quite sure they mean that seriously given that there is no meat in this Wendy's hamburger, the whole thing being made of vast and soporific slow moody soundscape that could all be improvisations, given these guys' skills and trades. Indeed the whole thing was recorded in one day early 07, then touched one evening at the end of the summer and treated and mastered by the unfortunately unavoidable Steven Wilson (Porcupine Tree) in the fall and winter, before being released early the following year. Not that this album is bad, quite the contrary, but it VERY uneventful, rather boring and soporific (not a bad thing in itself if you have insomnia or kids that need longer nights), but frankly, unless a big Fripp fanboy or needing another new age album, but in the latter case, I'd probably look in the Deuter section.