Recorded remotely, it seems, in Gothenburg and New Mexico, The Lightgiver is a recent collaboration between Lee Noyes and Barry Chabala. Both musicians play various pianos and percussive objects, to which Chabala adds acoustic and electric guitars.

The four tracks — "Dawn", "Cry", "The Lightgiver", "Unwearied" — seamlessly elide into each other to create the impression of movements, or even just continuous development, rather than separate compositions or takes. This makes sense, as the "score" is an I Ching symbol — likely adding to the aleatory sound-collage aesthetic Noyes and Chabala create so well — and an (untitled?) poem by Albert Camus meditating on the revitalizing beauty of morning dew, light, and existence. (A departure, for sure, for those steeped primarily in his more tenebrous works such as The Myth of Sisyphus.)

I cannot weigh in on the I Ching symbol, but The Lightgiver certainly reflects the simple (not simplistic) wonder and introspection of Camus' vignette, albeit with slightly less brightness. Noyes and Chabala marry contradictions: quizzical happenstance with intention. They make ambient clatter, but amplify it and thereby elevate its textures, its deliberateness, and significance. Using their stockpile of instruments idiomatically and not, they deploy a wide range of licks, clicks, and clacks, digital waves and fractured computer sounds, tinny strings, silence, and knocks. But then, among that churning stew, the piano comes to form a thread, haunting, delicate and disjointed, but stabilizing. Then, that thread takes over, stretching into a spiky but haunting melody accompanied by Chabala's evanescent guitar, driving the album to its end.