Having recently seen Chris Corsano live and enjoyed his solo album "The Young Cricketer" immensely, I couldn't imagine his playing being less than stellar and possibly mind-altering. I'd heard of Michael, sometimes Mick, Flower and knew of his Vibracathedral Orchestra, but that was it. Having listened to this duo recording, I know that I need to track down more by both of these astounding improvisers.

On this duo recording and elsewhere, Chris Corsano interacts with and responds to his musical interlocutors with hundreds of percussive gestures that never eclipse the other sounds around him. Michael Flower's playing on this album displays similar contradictions, pulling off close listening and hyper-kinetic motion simultaneously. In "I, Brute Force?," Flower explores and recasts anthemic phrases over Corsano's rolling snare and cymbals before shifting to bluesier but no less joyous permutations. Without a pause, the second track,"The Three Degrees of Temptation," begins with clatters, clangs, mallet work, and buzzing hammer-ons. It sounds darker without sacrificing the kinetic play. Flower's high keening of the Japan Banjo barely cuts through the busy percussion, anchoring this performance. With the gong-likes tones and the more muted clatters, Corsano's suggests two separate forces: one hushed, the other smaller and more frantic.

The shifting tonal bed of cello and tanpura drones that opens "The Drifter's Miracles" throws the polyrhythms of the earlier pieces into relief. In the quiet moments, the audible creaks and movement remind me that this was the work of two individuals; I have not drifted into a fully-rendered audio landscape. Similarly, the noticeable shift in fidelity of the next track, "The Beginning of the End," foregrounds the physical spaces where these two played together. Here, the room sounds boxier with more chaotic echoes and augments a tension between the slower string figures and the more rapid drum work.

As the final track stretches on, the playing remains as engrossing as ever. The melodic figures move from clearly demarcated to dissonately clanging. Describing what either musician does at a given moment is a bit like trying to pin down what might be going on in that pixelated forest on the inner artwork of the album. I'm no doubt missing many things both small and large, scurrying into or out of view. 9/10 -- Howard Martin (7 April, 2009)