After a long career (25 years and counting) playing piano in the lushly minimalist Australian trio The Necks, and solo work that often mirrored that band's gradually unfolding extended improvisations, Chris Abrahams has been dealing out surprises in recent years. He's done some glitchy synthesizer work in duo with Clair Cooper on guzheng and explored more starkly minimal improv areas with saxophonist Lucio Capece and experimental pianist Magda Mayas (Gardener, his recent duo with Mayas on Relative Pitch, is well worth a listen). It makes sense, then, in the unexpect-the-expected fold he's in, that he should pair off with the unceasingly inventive Alessandro Bosetti.
Bosetti first gained notice as a saxophonist, playing in the post-AMM sound world also populated by Capece and Mayas, but for some time now has concerned himself with text and electronics. After some bold exercises in spoken word (often involving extreme repetition) Bosetti has more recently been working with ambient sound design — not of the Eno-by-way-of-Satie variety but nearly natural brushes and clangings fashioned not to sound natural exactly but still reminiscent of the clattering of dishes and screen doors. This is, of course, a vast oversimplification borne of trying to create a linear narrative out of a multi-faceted artist's work, but it does serve to describe his role on We Who Had Left, his wonderful duo recording with Abrahams.
The fantastic precision and sheer musculature Abrahams has honed in his years with the Necks pays off fantastically in the six tracks he created with Bosetti. For the most part his playing here doesn't build in any orthodox way but works in fragments and repetitions, at some moments to the point of coming off as a telegraph operator. Against the range of "nonmusical," electronically-generated sounds Bosetti produces, his piano sounds wonderfully musical. Bosetti focuses on building loops of extraneous sound on most of the disc, only adding text to the strangely sentimental 10 minutes of "We Cannot Imagine." His voice is heard again on the lovely and unexpected closer, a cover of Bill Evans' "Waltz for Debby." Without adhering to the ľ signature, they meander wistfully through the tune, making it more rumination than ballad. Like the rest of the album, it's very nearly music.
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