Flautist/reeds player Geoff Leigh gigged with the earliest incarnation of Henry Cow; he's an elder statesman of the avant-garde who's been a frequent guest and session man on many a progressive musician's album sides, but remains woefully under-recorded as a solo artist. Keyboardist/vocalist Yumi Hara has played with the likes of David Toop and Hugh Hopper, and has recently forged a working relationship with former King Crimson violinist David Cross (now there's a tantalizing meeting of minds). The sounds that these two make while they're swimming Upstream goes against the tide of virtually any genre you can name check: wild and woolly, improvisational to a fault, and impeccably played, it's also a baffling recording that is something of an acquired, if soon desired, taste, even for those sympathetic to its deceptive charms.

Leigh's flute seems almost incongruous in this setting, volleying back and forth against Hara's lobs of piano and electronic processing, not to mention her high-pitched vocal gesticulations. A piece like the barely-restrained "The Strait" struggles valiantly to wrench order from chaos, Hara's mutant Monkisms ultimately getting overrun by Leigh's own brisk saxophone squonks and smears. "Stone of the Beach" works an otherworldly drone to more palpable effect, Hara's simmering coos primed by Leigh's deft percussive accents; imagine Terry Riley jamming with AMM and the plot thickens further. Then something like "At the Temple Gate" upsets the apple cart once again; well, at least the "jazz" apple cart, for anytime these two decide to "normalize" their environs things inevitably tumble down the proverbial drain, as a track such as this tempts a brave new world music out of the very thin air. It's quite an appealing noise, pure in one sense yet heavy with 35 years of British improv history underpinning it as well.

Perhaps Upstream would be easy to dismiss as simply another squeaky improv session were it not for the obvious rigor and multitude of invention the duo display. The near-11 minute "Dolphin Chase" is the album's piece de resistance, an uncanny reverie for strangulated zither, echoing electronics and atmospheric voice: beautifully realized and recorded, it will make your hair stand on end. This, in fact, seems to be the duo's true intentions, to sully all notions of so-called free music and imbue it with nothing less than sharp intellect and quick wit.