Sometimes they intertwine and entwine in an almost suffocating embrace, other times they seem to ignore each other following apparently distant trajectories, sometimes they seem to clog up all the available space, other times they respect a religious silence, almost afraid of invading other people's land.
We are talking about Barre Phillips' double bass and Joe Morris' acoustic guitar, engaged in eight duets recorded for the increasingly interesting Portuguese label Clean Feed. But Elm City Duets 2006 is above all a question of strings, the thin ones of the guitar and the more robust ones of the double bass.
Strings plucked, caressed, mistreated, struck with the fingers and with the bow, strings that screech and cry, strings that narrate life and therefore tell of joys and pains, illusions and hopes. There are no plots, tracks, connection points, narrative junctions in Elm City Duets 2006, there is simply the free and unobstructed flow of the musical thought of two masters of creative music.
Tracks
1. Ninth Square
2. Recite
3. Saved Stones
4. June Song
5. Normal Stuff
6. Spirals
7. Translate
8. Got into Some Things
JOE MORRIS guitar
BARRE PHILLIPS double bass
All tracks are improvised
Recorded June 19th, 2006 at Firehouse 12 Studios New Haven, Connecticut.
Clean Feed CF130 (Portugal)