Wednesday, September 5, 2012

Bad Luck, Two, 2011

Bad Luck, as I noted a few days ago in my review of their recent EP (see earlier posting), is Neil Welch on reeds (here tenor, soprano, and bass clarinet) and loops and effects; plus Chris Icasiano on drums (and on this set, Glockenspiel). The two CD set for this morning, Two (Table and Chairs 006), brings us to their most ambitious outing to date.

The first disk, "Bats," concentrates on the acoustic-free aspect of the duo and it comes off well. The second, "Josephine," combines more compositional and effects-oriented sounds with the freedom approach and is especially original.

Neil gets a wide range of sounds out of his reeds, from "the big sound" to highly evolved varieties of harmonics and overtone/multi-tone timbres. Christopher is a drummer of dramatic a-temporal figures that suit the reed work well and can abstract effectively in union with Neil in compositional passages.

"Josephine" builds sounds, parses them, loops them and brings effective contrasts. Both disks are lively and filled with content. "Josephine" is the more original and innovative.

Highly recommended.

No comments:

Post a Comment