Though not well known in this country, Park Je Chun is popular in Korea as one half of an improvising duo with pianist Miyeon, and lauded for his attempts to combine traditional Korean musics with western improv and jazz. Lauren Newton came up in universities and has worked with people like Anthony Braxton, Fritz Hauser, Jon Rose and Joelle Leandre, among many others. The two met at the first Seoul Meeting Free Music Festival in 2006, organized by Park, in which they played as part of a quartet. Here they play as a duo, bouncing off the idea of Pansori, a kind of Korean folk opera in which a lone singer talks and sings epic tales lasting many hours, accompanied only by a drummer.

One can hear why they decided to record this way: it really works. There is a lot of listening and sensitive interplay within these improvised "songs", from the semi-dialogue of "Seoul Aspects" to the free martial drumming meets Hugo Ball of "Extending II". Newton slips easily from melodies to sounds and back again � witness "Relativity" and its growls to ululation to Jeanette Macdonald stream. Words occasionally appear, or seem to appear without constructing any stories or even pictures, just sudden ideas popping out of the framework. Park's attention to pitch is acute, bending drum notes and metallic tones in the spaces between breaths, and his arsenal of percussion has a unique sound, constructed as it is from Western and Eastern instruments. Many of the pieces stop on a dime, seemingly composed, though they are all improvised.

I have few reservations about this disc. It would have been nice to hear more textural-type, sound-and-not-song playing, and toward the end they do seem to repeat themselves a little, but these are minor quibbles. It's a fun listen and I'll bet that live these two would be a hoot.