If there are veterans at all in the world of improvised music, Jack Wright is surely one. He's been touring and recording in the United States and Europe since 1979. Though releases of his music on larger labels are scarce, a quick look at his web site will show a long list of self-produced recordings, both solo and in partnership with many other players.

Ben Bennet is a bit younger than Wright, and to call him a percussionist doesn't quite do it. Bennett can seemingly play anything, with dexterity and imagination. The sounds he conjures up on this recording are sometimes alien, surprising and quick-changing. In fact, both these guys are throwing out sounds I'm not sure I've heard before.

It all starts off fairly conventionally, with very recognizable reed and skin sounds separated into their own side of the stereo image. Somewhere around the four-minute mark things begin to morph, slowly. The complexity ramps up a bit, and sonic variety opens out. As a percussion dabbler myself I find it difficult to not try to envision how Bennett is making these sounds, and if it weren't for the discreet division of sources into left/right, it would often be difficult to tell who is making what sound. Bennett squeaks like a cheap sax and Wright cackles like plastic. At times his tone is more brass than reed. Pops and breaths and thumps and scrapes, flatulence, scratch and crackle and all manner of friction are applied. They back themselves into corners and then turn to climb the walls, finding some sort of common ground again. It all sounds like a hell of a lot of fun, one of those discs that makes me want to play myself.

The only liner notes state: "recorded by jw on july 2, 2013 after hanging the ceiling." The playing here is also a testament to stamina then, and with Wright at 71, proof that the fire in the belly can burn a long time.