«Extremities» documents the first meeting of Brooklyn-based guitarist Jessica Ackerley and Los Angeles-based sax player-percussionist Patrick Shiroishi, recorded live in a basement apartment in Chinatown, Los Angeles. These young and fearless musicians come from strong free-improvised and free music scenes, and the sonic spectrum of their meeting ranges from free jazz to noise and even serrated slices of metal.

The nine improvised pieces are played with a strong and joyful sense of abandon, risk-taking and intensity but also with a playful sense of camaraderie. Each piece explores distinct dynamics and Different sonic possibilities. «Extremities» begin with the sparse and delicate gestures on «Popcorn Spackle» but both Ackerley and Shiroishi soon opt for a dense and physical interplay, dancing around each other and articulating their musical chemistry manifests in instantaneous spurts. The following «Muss Up» explodes with an acrobatic interplay of brutal, tortured sax shouts and raw and distorted guitar lines.

«Basement Runic» experiments with an almost silent drone with fleeting melodic veins. «Din Din Stridency» take this quiet mode to mysterious, exotic territories. The longest piece here. «Bulderdash» is a series of nervous and energetic collisions of machine-gun-like sax wails and cries and rough and thorny guitar lines. «Short Circuit» gravitates into an intense and noisy, rhythmic core, but «Drum and Paper» suggests a more restrained and somewhat ritualist and surprisingly quite melodic, rhythmic conversation of Ackerley and Shitoishi. They conclude this set of challenging, extreme duets with the brief, emotional and engaging «Hello Fairies».

Eyal Hareuveni 

Jessica Ackerley (g), Patrick Shiroishi (s, perc)