There s a slew of people making albums with computers and found sounds, but the results are too often piece-meal in vision and effect, but with every album Martin expands his sonic vocabulary and editing skills. In Simon Fell he s found an ideal collaborator. If you ve heard any of Simon s terrific free-jazz workouts, you ll know his recordings and live work have always complimented and enhanced the playing of others. This time he s brought out the best in Archer. The line between madness and genius may well be thin, but Martin Archer certainly knows how to parade a carnival along it.
Every track is a modernist gem of mournful, elegiac, deeply moving instrumental music.
This CD is a rich, remarkable statement. The premise has shifted, and this makes for a new focus in the music. As a result of its methodology, however, the music on this disk is much closer to the familiar models of free improvisation than its predecessor. That, though, might just make it even more subversive in the face of all those improv purists who look on the studio somewhat as members of the Temperance Association used to regard the local pub. Without wanting to make too much of the Freudian angle, the metaphor of a body of standing water comes up too often to be ignored.