I’m in a corridor in an experimental situationist arts centre somewhere in Northern Europe and Blurt are playing in a room to my left and Gong are playing in a room to my right. What should I do?
Easy. Stay right where I am and listen to Paar Linien. This is the happiest I’ve ever been while standing in a corridor.
Of course all of this is just a metaphor to attempt to describe the overall feeling of this recording.
This duopoly of sound continues throughout the whole piece. There are two soundtracks running both separately and simultaneously. They drift apart and come together. There is synchronicity, dissonance and syncopation both fighting and unifying in equal measure.
The recording is clearly a mix of scripted and unscripted sections that are cohesive more often than they are chaotic although chaos does play a significant role in disrupting the listener from time to time.
Tenor and Alto saxophones are used in such a way to evoke a more than sufficient lyrical layer to an otherwise largely instrumental album. They dual and duet, counterpoint and harmonise with energy and subtlety.
The moments of magic that occur here are both deliberate and accidental and the joy is that the listener will never know which is which.
I’ll be listening to this a lot.
