The first chapter of this vinyl series opened with Zu duelling with Iceburn, the follow up is a face to face that puts Mats Gustafsson in front of Paolo Angeli. Talking about the swedish saxophonist (here he plays also alto fluteophone) what should I add you don't know already?...personally I've loved his combined effort together with “Rome's only” Zu (with
Takemure more then ever in full blossoming), by the way what we have here is an acoustic improvised performance not so far from many releases coming out on Creative Sources, I'm saying that for many newcomers, since in the past this form of "reinventing the instrument" has been already used in other genres of music. Despite the fact his "weapons" (on this recording) have solid bass timbre, Gustafsson's side presents some crippled, suffocated playing
that brought to my mind "a choking" Braxton, Birgit Ulher, Scott Rosemberg or something in the vein. "Men in his boat desperately crushing the ice" instead is a bit more “traditionally” played and is more accessible also for those confidential with jazz recording in solo of other wild saxophonist. Honestly the most interesting side of this split is that referred to the single live-suite played by Paolo Angeli. Beside recommending you to visit his personal website to see
what kind of incredible prepared guitars he designs, let's say he lately got the attention of many jazzists for having been commissioned some guitars from Pat Metheny. This live recordings with no overdubs presents the sardinian guitarist crossing jazz boundaries to hybridize it with psychedelia and who knows: post rock?...but that's probably related to the fact this' guitar driven music. Angeli clean performing is an interesting blend of different ideas and
techniques and the funny thing is that while changing atmosphere and style, he maintains a good dose of continuity. If you miss Frith and Kaiser teaming up with their acoustic prepared-guitars, here you can hear both of them fused into one with moooooore and mooooore melody.