III

This incarnation of the influential British free improvisation ensemble is a curious standout in their repertoire of highly experimental music, most notably because of its directly musical techniques and almost fusion approach that is peculiar for a group usually associated with the highest degrees of avant-garde abstraction. This recording is a duo formation of the group's founding members -- guitarist Keith Rowe and percussionist Eddie Prevost -- who went into the studio under the commission of ECM offshoot Japo to explore a sound they called "meta-music." The results are a highly electric free-form session which sees Keith Rowe playing at moments in an almost conventional manner. The guitarist is known as a groundbreaking experimentalist who uses the instrument solely for generating noise and texture through any number of preparations and extended techniques. That is to say that this album is quite possibly the only time in his recording career that he can be heard playing notes on the fret-board of the instrument -- usually scraping the strings with metal objects, bows, and small electric fans. Percussionist Eddie Prevost plays incredibly well in his distinctive un-metered textural approach -- often the duo's interplay makes the music so homogenic it's hard to identify the source of the sound. Highly challenging and invigorating music from this stridently avant-garde group.