| In this provocative journey towards lost innocence, the pianist imposes restraint in the use of instrument not only upon himself, but also asks his colleagues Barry Guy and Ramon Lopez, to simplify their interventions in a similar way. Who would have thought it of these three indomitable, red-hot hyper-virtuosos? However, this three-way understanding goes back a long way, for they have been generating high-voltage spontaneous combustion together in different formats for years, and their communication floats to the surface light and serene, stripped of all solemnity, as naturally some recently-engendered creature begins to move. This new affective fabric, over and above instrumental virtuosity and the mere concept of accompaniment, takes a productive 'less is more' as its watchword, obeying the call to 'reduce, reduce, reduce' in a detailed work of discarding, generating an environment of freedom in which players come in and drop out again in a strange mixture of independence and common agreement. Discursive intimacy and lyrical circulation make their mark lightly from the first. |