A Duo In Berlin

by Brian OlewnickAnnette Krebs and Taku Sugimoto are two improvising guitarists who share very similar approaches to their sense of the spatial placement of sounds while generating guitar sounds that are quite different from each other. Krebs rarely produces notes which the casual listener would recognize as having come from a guitar, instead preferring low rumbles, scratches, hisses, and drones, all carefully considered, selected, and delicately situated within the sonic space. Sugimoto, at this point in his career, was producing relatively traditional sounds, plucked strings with a pronounced tonal quality, but using them sparely enough so as to resonate like isolated raindrops in a large pond. Together, the duo produces a fascinating, gentle web that is at once fragile and not lacking at all in tension. Given this somewhat esoteric stance, the music is remarkably varied, generally remaining on the quiet, contemplative end of the spectrum with occasional outbursts into noisier areas, but often shifting from fairly abstract, dry territories into surprisingly tonal washes of luxuriant sound. There's a palpable sense of each musician listening closely to the other, engaging in a conversation that becomes less and less arcane as one settles into their special rhythms. It's difficult not to describe music like this as the aural equivalent of a Japanese rock garden, each element chosen with care and a total lack of interest in hitting the listener over the head with effects or grandstanding. Beautiful, sparse, and extremely musical, A Duo in Berlin is a disc to warm the heart of any free improv fan.