ADD TO CART Click to add to your cart. You can always remove it later.

Title:  Arborvitae Artist:  Loren Connors; David Grubbs -Various Artists Label:  Hapna Format:  CD Price:  € 12.00   Mp3 samples: none

Title Description:
The most surprising part is that it hadnt happened before.

Loren Connors and David Grubbs first performed as a duo on May 30, 2003 at the Green-Wood Cemetery Chapel in Brooklyn, N.Y. Green-Wood Cemetery is one of Brooklyns landmarks - its the highest natural point in the borough, and an unexpected expanse of tranquility in the midst of the city. The stone interior of the chapel makes the quietest of sounds audible, and Loren and David played a remarkably quiet yet extraordinarily varied hour of improvised music. Energized, they repaired to the studio to record Arborvitae.

It certainly could have happened earlier. David first heard LorenÕs In Pittsburgh LP (St. Joan) in 1990, and felt it a revelation. Lorens example of creating silences, of singing - with the guitar - in silences, was crucial to Davids shift from the rock trio Bastro to the often percussionless Gastr del Sol. David and Jim O ,Rourke reissued In Pittsburgh several years later on their DexterÕs Cigar label, and Loren and Gastr del Sol performed a number of shows on the same bill, including the 1996 Table of the Elements Yttritum festival in Chicago. Jim produced the self-titled Hoffman Estates album (Drag City), which featured a core duo of Loren and Alan Licht surrounded by the cream of ChicagoÕs improvisers. But never the twain did meet and play in duo until this year.

Arborvitae opens and closes with the pairing of David on piano and Loren on an electric guitar played so quietly that at times his pedal-stomping is wondrously distinct. Blossom Time and the title track positively float, with Loren alternating between soaring single-note lines and playing the rough, barnacled anchor to Davids relentless tide. DavidÕs approach to the piano recalls his playing on Palaces Arise Therefore (Drag City) and his own Banana Cabbage, Potato Lettuce, Onion Orange (Table of the Elements). Loren hypnotizes throughout. This is one of the rare instances in his career that heÕs recorded in a commercial studio, and his playing time and again rewards such a detailed representation. The Ghost of Exquisite and Hemlock Path are two slow-motion lockings of guitar horns. The Highest Point in Brooklyn isnÕt the place to be in an electrical storm - but it rolled in all of a sudden and there we were, uncovered and open to the elements...

Arborvitae proudly features cover artwork by the mercurial, demanding Cologne artist Michael Krebber.

Vital Review: