Sharif Sehnaoui / Adam Golebiewski

Håvard Volden/Carlo Costa

In the Wake

Neither/Nor Records n/n 010

Opposing ways of treating the textures brought forth with acoustic guitar-percussion duets are expressed on these CDs with sonic gestures created by duos whose originality prevents mistaking one for the other – or any similar duos. While the meeting point may be atonality, Meet the Dragon’s strategy is more emphatically resounding than In the Wake’s. Symbolically the approaches could be linked to different backgrounds. Guitarist Sharif Sehnaoui and percussionist Adam Golebiewski of Meet the Dragon are respectively Lebanese and Polish, citizens of two countries that have seen their share of violent strife. Guitarist Håvard Volden and percussionist Carlo Costa on the other hand are Norwegian and Italian by birth.

Such geographic bromides can be taken so far though. While Italians are supposed to be volatile players, most of Costa’s work is with other lower-case improvisers such as Joe Moffett and Sean Ali. And while Oslo-based Volden’s work with the reductionist Muddersten trio is one role, he also plays with a noise Rock band. Meantime Sehnaoui has worked with restrained improvisers like Tom Chant and Birgit Ulher and Golebiewski has played with Fred Lonberg-Holm and John Edwards.

More generic to the program is that Sehnaoui/Golebiewski work through one, nearly 60 minute improvisation, while Volden/Costa divides their work into four. The unyielding, metallic scrapes, whistles, rubs and rattles are apparent very quickly on Meet the Dragon, with the guitarist’s chromatic banjo-like strums and near-bottleneck guitar squeezes and thrusts soon joining. From that point on, except in brief instances, the slackened strings exposition is abandoned for high intensity string shuffling, rubbing and even percussive hand-or-mallet pummeling on the strings from the guitar held horizontally. This makes for profound and distinctive contrapuntal challenges to the drummer, whose contributions range from gamelan orchestra-like bell shakes to crying sandpaper-strength rubs from the sides and top of his drums, As Sehnaoui aims for a climax of stretched string whines and rasgueado-styled pops, both instruments become percussion with singular riffs slashing into one another/

The other duo members evolve their narrative only gradually with folk-styled guitar strums peeping through a blanket of concentrated drum pulses. On stand-out tracks such as “Pool” and “Ebb” they define their reductionist art not only by treating each instrument as if it is a percussion source, but by seemingly transforming inchoate output from all-acoustic instruments into electronic-resembling oscillations. These machine-like toggles redefine the former track which transforms string band-like twangs and echoing percussion into a connective showcase of microtonal slurred fingering and resonating cymbals. With earlier tracks sometime reverberating with woody marimba-styled whacks, the concluding “Ebb” flows with a near-Metal guitar buzz from Volden, met by the percussionist creating freight train-crossing-like bell pulsations, that affiliate and dissolve into reflective timbres as a finale.

No one should confuse these duo CDs for pleasant background fare. But with the right amount of patience and concentration, some idea of how sounds are shaped into unusual and fascinating themes will be revealed.

–Ken Waxman

Track Listing: Meet: 1. Meet the Dragon

Personnel: Meet: Sharif Sehnaoui (acoustic guitar) and Adam Golebiewski (drum, cymbal, selected objects)

Track Listing: In: 1. Awash 2. Pool 3. Ripple 4. Ebb

Personnel: In: Håvard Volden (acoustic guitar) and Carlo Costa (percussion)