FMP CD 102

David Walter

The Bible says: "In my Lord's house there are many mansions". And in the bassist's world there are many genres: solo, symphony, chamber, ethnic, rock. Now there has been added a style and a literature for which we do not yet have an appropriate name. Its characteristics: a five-and-a-half-octave range; the use of every conceivable harmonic, natural and artificial; a vast variety of percussion effects with the bass as "drum"; dramatic new uses of the bow; virtuosic pizzicato.

And the music? Melodies fragmented and extended, rhythms of incredible complexity, dynamics from inaudible to shattering, timbres from saccharine to japaleño, all created with a freedom of improvisation and imagination that is electrifying in its intensity and novelty.

In these Bass Duos Peter Kowald, Barry Guy, Barre Phillips and Maarten Altena have created nothing less than a new genre: challenging, exciting, a new voice in the spiralling development of the Bass.

Listen and be thrilled and astounded.

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