The Humans, Scala, London

In an interview a few years ago, Robert Fripp complained about his ill-treatment in the UK. Abroad, he’s fêted as a great guitarist and founder of the cult prog rock band King Crimson. But at home, he claims, all he gets are heckles and snotty reviews. Prog’s catastrophic collapse in reputation in the UK (excessively speculative music, rampant self-indulgence – the charge sheet oddly resembles the complaints against bankers today) has left a lasting taint.

So the sparsely attended venue may not have surprised Fripp as he entered the stage on Wednesday night, pausing theatrically to scan the audience as if to gauge the precise lack of numbers.

The occasion was one of the first live appearances of his wife’s band The Humans – Mrs Fripp being Toyah Willcox, the 1980s pop star, actress and general light entertainer. The low turn-out suggested that the husband-and-wife combination of Fripp, the ageing prog maestro, and Willcox, the voice of the Teletubbies, hadn’t gripped the public imagination. But an intriguing, often terrific, show suggested it should.

It opened with a solo spot by the bespectacled, mild-looking Fripp, who plugged his guitar into a complicated-looking amp and proceeded to produce eerie cosmic whooshes from the instrument, punctuated with anguished solos, like cries echoing in outer space. It was a masterly display of guitar atmospherics – Fripp, a frequent collaborator with Brian Eno in the 1970s, calls them “Frippertronics” – though there was, inevitably, a heckle.

“C’mon Toyah,” an impatient 1980s pop fan called out.

The pop quotient didn’t go up appreciably when Willcox appeared. The Humans are an art-rock band featuring two bassists – one, confusingly, is REM’s drummer Bill Rieflin – and Fripp on guitar. Willcox, in a black PVC top, a memento of her 1970s punk roots, led the line with expressive vocals, twirling dances and stylised stage movements: Stevie Nicks meets Brechtian cabaret.

The twin bass players, occasionally complemented by programmed beats, played sinewy, rumbling rhythms, a kind of twisted funk, with Fripp contributing a range of guitar effects, from gnarly riffs and a pounding cover of Hendrix’s “Purple Haze” to delightfully subtle chimes.

On this basis the work of Mrs Robert Fripp and Mr Toyah Willcox, as Willcox introduced herself and her husband, deserves a far wider audience.