There are many ways in which the duo of Phil Minton and Veryan Weston works. They share a love of history, drawing from a wide range of songs and texts for much of their work. They also share a keen leftist political bent, having used the writings of Ho Chi Minh and Russian revolutionary leader Nestor Makhno as source material for their compositions. And they possess a strong sensibility in working together, a formality in their performing which allows for moments of humor and an equity that never allows anything so simple as Weston's piano simply accompanying Minton's singing which they've honed over two decades of working together.

The new issue of Ways takes the original 1987 LP release and more than doubles its length with 11 tracks recorded in 1992 without feeling uneven or pasted together. Along with their own compositions, they draw here from Charles Ives, Franz Schubert, Eric Dolphy, Hugo Wolf, Jacques Brel and Bertolt Brecht and Kurt Weill, as well as presenting a part of their suite of songs written from the diaries kept by Minh while in prison. But like any good classical recital or folk song circle, they make the material a consistent whole. Minton's vocal part in the 2004 Victo release Five Men Singing — with Jaap Blonk, Koichi Makagami, Paul Dutton and David Moss — suggests more than a little about his avant garde vocalizations, but he is generally more tempered in this duo. Weston plays with a delicate classicism, not even quite swinging when they touch on jazz standards, but also applies plenty of muscle in some surprisingly raucous passages.

While their work may all be a bit heady, it is thoroughly enjoyable, in no small part because of how well they play together. And they tack a moment of Elvis Presley's "Jailhouse Rock"' onto the end of the Minh prison song, the rare moment here indicating that not everything is so terribly serious. While Ways is not quite a compilation or greatest hits, it is an excellent primer for the duo's intriguing work.