It starts slow and distant, ears needing to strain to distinguish the music from the world outside. This duo cello/percussion recording by Mêlèe is the sound of reality smeared across magnetic tape, a world unto itself.
Ben Hall and Hans Buetow balance intelligence and freedom in their inveterate playing here, both reinvent their instruments. The obvious communication is astonishingly prescient, tones rising like arterial strains of feedback. The cello comes out of the darkness like the foghorn of slowly sinking ships once bound for meat markets. The stretch and scuff of metal has he sound of an arcane musicality, but with the precisions of practiced improvisation. This single track is a rudimentary exploration of the now, at times both harsh and beautiful. The organic basis of their sound brings the sound of signal overload that comes and goes without the battering of equipment or abuse of dials.
A niggling mosquito itch terrorises a suite of frayed strings, the returning whimpers breathing in new life with heaped organic treble sounds. It’s near the song’s end that a leisurely looping tone begins that engulfs the record, that particular type of sound that his different parts of the brain depending where you move your head you hear it in different parts of your brain. Beautiful string lines come and go, as does a bouncing ball percussive tap, there aren’t any many corners Mêlèe can’t get into. A perfect record.
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