4 out of 5

Label: Astral Spirits

Produced by: Jacob Winik (engineered by, mixed by)

Cello. Drums. Teddy Rankin-Parker and Donald Pearce prove much can be done between these two instruments, covering a wide spread of free-jazz, ambient and clatter across a relatively brief seven tracks.

Odd Hits is not that odd, I don’t think: it’s rather very structured in my mind, using a loose / heavy parallel sequencing and the synonymy of the instruments’ sounds across the tracks to keep things in line: Rankin-Parker and Pearce start us out at extremes of scrabbly noise and then pretty pummeling “rock,” songs thereafter bounding back and forth between these two styles in different, perhaps slightly more constrained forms.

As prime examples of these styles: Fast Clip is krautrock-coded beat; closer Results is a slow waltz of whale sounds, a sonorous wave of droning, weighty lurches. While I think that, ideally, all of the tracks had the same punch as these two templates, I dig how the duo didn’t force their sounds to conform to more identifiable genre, while also providing a clear feeling for each track.

So, yes, this is still experimental jazz, a bit “odder” than some idealized norm, but Rankin-Parker and Pearce guide you through the experiment confidently, and expertly.