Reeds duos are complicated, and writing about them even more so. Musically, we actually have two solo instruments that are sound-wise close to each other, i.e. there are hardly any textures against which one of the instruments can stand out. When writing about it, it’s easy to fall into platitudes or obvious comparisons, e.g. that the duets sound like you’re listening to a dialog between songbirds (I’ve succumbed to this temptation, too). But on their first duo album Mats Gustafson and Liudas Mockūnas make it easy not to fall into this trap.
First of all, these two real warhorses of the NoBusiness label sound very different, which can be seen in the choice of their instruments. Here, Gustafsson is on the flute, the slide-flute, baritone sax and live electronics, while Mockūnas can be heard on several high saxophone types like sopranino, soprano, reedless soprano and overtone sax (but also on bass saxophone and contrabass clarinet). Excitement through stark contrasts is therefore guaranteed from the outset.
Of course, there are also the reeds duels, such as the title track, in which Gustafsson on the flute engages in a kind of race with Mockūnas’s high saxophones, or “Cold talk. From the side.“, in which the two musicians on baritone and bass sax yell at each other in an almost painful way. However, the most interesting tracks are “More sad than love. Is life.“ and “An urge. Of nothingness.“, because on these two pieces Gustafsson uses live electronics - and he does it in an almost ultra-brutal way. In the first track, he initially sounds like a sputtering engine making a cold start, while Mockūnas still plays around these sounds hesitantly and cautiously. Over time, Gustafsson increases the speed of the engine noises, only to then completely overdo it (in a positive sense) and finally reach a crassness that is best known from Aphex Twin recordings such as “Come to Daddy“. You feel like you’re standing in a tin hut with a hurricane raging around you. Mockūnas is the man screaming for help in this hut. In “An urge. Of nothingness.“ the live electronics are not audible at first, they lurk in the background and then provide the dark surface for an intense, gloomy saxophone solo. But while the sax then falls silent, the rumbling wall of noise remains and is what we hear at the very end.
Watching A Dog. Smiling is a raging hell ride that makes no attempt to conceal its darkness. But this is precisely where the album’s appeal lies.
Watching A Dog. Smiling is available on vinyl in a limited edition of 300 and as a download. You can listen to it here:
The vinyl version is sold out at bandcamp and NoBusiness, but there are some copies available on the internet, for example at Trost Records.
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