3 out of 5

Label: Astral Spirits / Monofonus Press

Produced by: Nicholas Tapin (recorded / mixed by)

This is a totally wild racket for a duo, and never quite uninteresting, but it also falls into a more general bucket of improv / free-jazz that ends up lacking definition when it’s done at length. You get past the 20 minute opener, for example, and you’re like – wow, that was non-stop, but pretty engaging – and then the next track pretty much picks up exactly in the same spot, and you realize that ‘non-stop’ is going to be exactly that for the full album.

But I do want to step back to that first track impression, as when The Ballot or the Bullet drops you right into the madness, you may be bracing yourself / your ears for what’s to come, but despite my description being apt – de Dionyso toot-toot wails on sax, and Ted Byrnes destroys kitchen sink percussion for 20 minutes straight – there’s an element of control amidst the relative madness that impresses. That control mainly comes from Arrington on the opener, who paces their playing to give room to Ted’s explosiveness, akin to a never-ending, always-building drumroll, but the duo do switch places on the next tune, with percussion allowing the sax to take the lead.

Track three kind of goes down a more typical improv road, with stops and starts that are more clearly suggestive of the two “in conversation,” and finding their way – I maybe fall out a bit here – but track four balances this (similar to how track one and two can be paired) with some real punctuated, riffy moments.

To reiterate, though, from afar, this is a straight set of two skilled musicians going all out. Their awareness of the agenda keeps things from being overwhelming, or going off the rails, but that agenda is still mostly unvarying, and thus hard to bill as fully engaging.