This 25-minutes live free improvisation brings together two Russian, Moscow-based experimental improvisers – trumpeter Konstantin Sukhan, known from his past collaborations with American improvisers as guitarist Henry Kaiser, drummer Michael Zerang and cellist Fred Lonberg-Holm, and tenor sax and the electronics player Solo Operator (aka Alexander ‘Sasha’ Serechenko), whose name stands for a sonic project that aims to blend free jazz aesthetics, innovative softwares and self-made program and anarchistic ideology. The performance was recorded at Mars Center in Moscow, one of the Moscow known spaces for audio-visual art.

The untitled piece begins as an imaginary soundtrack to some remote nature scenery, where the trumpet and the tenor sax create weird bird calls obscured by gentle waves of electronic sounds. Patiently the interplay intensifies and the sounds of Sukhan and Solo Operator, who at first were delivered from distant sides of the same space, are melted into a dense and nervous texture. Now Sukhan busy, psychedelic trumpet playing reference the playing of the singing tone of late South African Mongezi Feza (especially his immortal playing on Robert Wyatt song «Little Red Riding Hood Hit The Road» from «Rock Bottom») while Solo Operator sax blows soars into deeper space.

Intriguing and highly original.

Eyal Hareuveni  

Solo Operator (ts, loop station); Konstantin Sukhan (tp)