Matta Gawa is Ed Ricart on guitar and pedals, and Sam Lohman on drums, but the way Ricart uses his effects pedals may elevate them to the status of a third member. There's a lot of looping going on here, usually of a bass line of some kind, but occasionally of another guitar part as well, providing the illusion of a quartet where none be.

That said, this is an album of great, mostly high-energy blowing with a definite 21st century vibe. Ricart comes up with some nice riffs and lines to loop and then improvises ably over the top of the grunge, little motifs peeping above the howl. He's really adept at switching back and forth between his pedals and the fret-board, so much so that it took me a minute to realize just how many things were happening at once during these little jams. I occasionally hear snippets of memory-jogging sequences of notes (like the almost Santana quote during the first tune) but with a Western instrument like guitar there are only so many combinations available. I also hear passages that sound uncannily like Sonny Sharrock ("Izezi and His Ba"), Masayuki Takayanagi (the first part of "Bas of Re"), and/or Rudolph Grey (pick one). Throughout the proceedings Sam Lohman kicks up a rocking, rollicking storm of DRUMS that supports and sometimes outlines the guitar/electronics ruckus.

The beginning of "Dialogue of a Man with His Ba" has low, low bass swells and tiny plinks and pings leading into sweeping mangled feedback, assisted by an almost metronomic beat. A quiet beeping loop fades as the specter of David Gilmour shimmers for a few brief seconds, before a relatively straight (i.e. unmodified) guitar motif appears and slippery slide lines and pretty little melodic figures slip out between, like maybe he's squeezing the guitar neck while he's playing and stuff is oozing out between his fingers. All hell breaks loose for about 30 seconds and then things calm down again, the wave receding. A slide motif from earlier in the jam supports the next little segment and eventually we're off again.

I'd venture that if we tossed Jim Hall, Nels Cline, Sonny Sharrock, Henry Kaiser and maybe, hmmmm... Bill Frisell into a blender with Tom Surgal and the ghost of Rashied Ali, it might sound something like this.