Robert Dick and Stephan Haluska – Crop Circles (Infrequent Seams, 2024)

By Nick Ostrum

Crop Circles captures Robert Dick and Stephan Haluska in a flute, harp, various small instruments and vocal duo. At its core, though, Crop Circles is a harp-flute duo, a rarity in almost any music, including the contemporary avant-garde.

From the beginning, it is entrancing. Both Dick (primarily flute) and Haluska (primarily harp) play their instruments in nonidiomatic ways, eliciting a range of noises through creative techniques that run from Dick mimicking the cluck of a saxophone to Haluska eliciting loose, tinny vibrations that suggest anything but the classical harp. Both musicians seem to derive special satisfaction in the minutiae and textures: soft clicks and scrapes, or periodic sharp huffs (and whatever the harp-equivalent of that breathy sound would be.) Of course, Dick and Haluska can hold their own making more standard music, as well. That comes through well enough at various points, but it is never the primary goal, here. Rather, Crop Circles is somewhat brazen in its deceptively crude fusion of the strange and mundane. Sometimes, it touches on something almost primeval (in the deeply, darkly human sense), as in the extended vocals chant on Owls Angry Over Jumping Jacks. Other times, it seems intent on deconstructing and thoroughly demystifying tradition, as in Narcissism Meets Necessity, which layers clattery improv with periodic screams, duck sounds, a mouth harp and a phlegmy back-throated hack. It takes something elevated – the combination of flute and harp, expertly finessed free music, ethereal-minded experimental music - and brings it back to our imperfect, pock-marked, craggy, polluted, and, for all that (except the pollution), lovely earth.

Since picking this album up at the beginning of the year, it took me about ten-months until I gave ita first serious listen. I am glad I finally did. Crop Circles is available as a cassette or download from Bandcamp: