This release has several salient aspects, musical, technical and...programmatic. The latter involves the title, Vents, here referring to a system of micropores in rock formations through which alkaline fluids navigate and emerge. Once the listener is made aware of this fact, it's impossible to listen to the music without picturing this process, "hearing" the multitude of wheezes, clicks, whistles etc. as the natural goings-on of a geological process. This also helps buttress the non-arc nature of the two tracks, very much more a glimpse of natural activity rather than any kind of formulated, even if improvised, composition.

The technical side bears some mention, however as it contributes greatly to the whole. Denley wields his usual array of flutes; one imagines the term is often used loosely re: tubes one blows through, though no greater description is provided. Farrar impersonates the aforementioned vents to some extent, using microporous ceramics immersed in water resulting, one assumes, in various soft, emergent sounds. He also uses orbees, described as "small, colorful, gel-like beads...that can absorb water and expand to many times their original size." Not sure which of the plethora of unusual sounds can be ascribed to them. Gorfinkel wields "airdrums", wherein he stretches latex balloon material over drums shells, resulting in an instrument that can be stroked, blown into, struck, etc. yielding a vast array of sounds, perhaps tending toward the lower end of the spectrum.

The two long pieces, "Vents 1" & "Vents 2", operate kind of in AMM territory though with even less directionality, without the "AMM arc" that was often in play. Here, as mentioned, we're in an odd space that in some ways seems more akin to a non-manipulated field recording, though performed by three live musicians. This listener finds that approach very invigorating, a serene kind of drama where the "surprises" are entirely unforced, where everyone's sounds are not only integrated into a non-hubristic whole, but where the humanity is almost subsumed into a larger process. The range of the sonorities, the vast spaciousness, the immense variety of sound — all contribute to a wonderful, imaginative and unique set of (for lack of a better term) music.