The pairing of Lescalleet and Ankersmit is not one I would've come up with off the top of my head. Lescalleet, perhaps best known for his collaborations with Boston-based improvisers including Bhob Rainey and Greg Kelley, uses a ragtag collection of ancient tape recorders and equally tattered electronics, running short loops of crumpled tape between machines, generating complex rumbles that range from near inaudibility to raging storms. Ankersmit, a young German saxophonist, has only one recording extant, a self-produced 3" disc consisting of four pieces for alto, all of them highly chiseled, upper register squalls. Asked about the collaboration before the show, Jason said that they'd met when they performed individual sets at a gig in Boston, hit it off and decided to play together, understanding that their approach was rather different but interested in seeing what would occur when they collided.

Lescalleet is always a kick to watch, prowling around his several machines, setting a tape in shaky motion here, fiddling with controls there, crouched behind a bank of wires. He started a low, grumbling sound at the beginning of the set, the loop creating a subtle rhythmic element. Contrary to what he had demonstrated on his disc, Ankersmit spent much of the time creating breathy tones, often blowing into the upper keyhole on the neck of his alto or playing it sans mouthpiece. For about the first half hour, they kept things at a low volume, Ankersmit playing steam escape valve to Lescalleet's creaky machinery. To the extent that the music was essentially drone-related (which, at least in a manner of speaking, it was), I tended to hear high levels of detail. The rather blurry nature of this duo's sounds meant that such detail was likely to become apparent only at louder volumes, which I began to ache for after a while. Drones, for me, become much more interesting when the instruments involved "disappear". Happily, Lescalleet found a rich sequence of loops, gradually increased the volume and soon had himself an absorbing wall of sound, ricocheting from the surrounding speakers, totally immersing the audience in a luscious bath. Ankersmit did his best to keep up and, to his credit, succeeded in not interfering, but was really swamped by the noise. When the loudness subsided, the pair seem to have found solid footing and the subsequent, relatively quiet sections traveled some substantially beautiful areas, similar in element to the beginning of the evening but with far more confidence. This, perhaps inevitably, dissipated after a while and they continued to play for perhaps fifteen minutes longer than necessary, but that pretty much comes with the territory.

A nice show overall though, with enough unique sounds, strong personalities and exploratory conceptions to make up for the occasional dry patch. They're well worth checking out.