While listening to the interplay of cello duo Ulrich Mitzlaff and Miguel Mira, I am reminded of the interaction between my two ten-year old children during our recent vacation. Though not related by blood � and not often together under the same roof � these kids share an uncannily loyal friendship, the same brain and a secret language, all part of a phenomenon that I attribute to both being exactly this age. That is, their mirrored physical and mental circumstances ensure that there is little going on with one that the other isn't privy to; the younger and older kids in the extended family are fine yet lack the same awkward skill-set, now-juvenile dreams and pastimes to properly mesh into this twosome's connection.

And you better believe they have their own set of anarchic rules and test everything they are supposed to do.

By the same token, Mitzlaff and Mira's doubling instrumentation (though the latter tunes in fourths, like a guitar) is an impenetrable exchange of ideas; guide them with staff paper or replace one with a violin or viola and the need to coax common ground might be tenuously complementary, but not exude the anomalous sonic playground Cellos possesses.

A playground this is. As with most trained musicians who now spend most of their time engaged in improvisation, there is an unraveling quality to these eight works, as if smashing the orb of scales and Academia into something still technically sound yet unfettered with piqued elation (literal unraveling, as their strings sound as if they may snap at any moment). After the scuttle-paired-with-furious-drone of the brief introduction ("Shape"), Mitzlaff and Mira approach "Inversion" with a hollow col legno, scraping, dragging and squeaking bows rife with muted anticipation; when the duo peaks near the five-minute mark, the work becomes a disoriented seesaw-lock of haphazard harmonics and sliding fingers, then a windup akin to a cyclical shift from first to eighteenth gear. On the "Tripartition" suite (parts one through three) instrument extensions abound: Mitzlaff and Mira oscillate between a python squeeze and flashing viper strikes, pulling strings, winding tuners, buzzing fingernails and anxiously tapping the entirety of their cellos to successfully, as the note on the disc says, "mimic live electronics". "Discontinuity" and "Asymmetry" display melancholic driving shades of Bart�k's fourth and fifth string quartets with the pointillistic fluency of Webern's F�nf S�tze f�r Streichquartett as the duo now incorporates fierce melodic punctuations and descents into their textural web; and according to the fate of any burning-bright specter, after unanimous shouts and fidgets, they end the closer ("Abstract") with a sleepy sigh.

As with the aforementioned children, Mitzlaff and Mira are intense, sweet, at times seamless, defiant, supportive, full of ideas, and continually enthralling. Most important, they seem to be having fun.