Guy is wearing a Peeesseye t-shirt on the inside-front cover of this rather sumptuously packaged offering from Dual Plover which is as good a sign as any of impending originality and stimulation. In fact it's a very honest, open and affectionate recording which manages to tease, frustrate, fortify and amuse all whilst being not in the least bit facetious or arrogantly ironic. Marylise Frecheville and Eric Boros' play is lovely, a constant bickering of guitars and percussion that raises musical ideas, questions and quandaries with avidity and spleen. Boros' unaffected notes are the spidery, stepwise grid underneath which Frecheville's percussion swerves and waltzes, her voice shooting off in epic tantrum or chuckling spree as the fancy takes her. The sheer joy of composition is happily at the forefront of all these pieces, "100% Hello" and "One for the Road" both like watching a game of Mousetrap in fast-forward and just as colourful. You can't help but know that a cup of tea at the merch stand with these people would be very, very nice.

An arrangement of a traditional Shona mbira piece is expertly done, referencing the mbira's cyclical patterns, syncopation, interlocking motion and repetition as key sites of exploration for both players' instrumentation, whereas tracks like "Dutar" ask you to keep track of what is being repeated yourself, to mentally arrange these non-stop offerings of disparate riff and rhythm as they're constantly juggled back and forth not in mimicry of song but in celebration of its fecund and elastic components. A wonderfully intimate rendition of "Hole in the Bucket" rounds off the record, a perfect summation of the cooperative, pragmatic and slightly mad tendencies of the music previous and testament again to the sincerity of approach that makes the rest of the album so enjoyable. Despite having some of its mania sapped by the deliciously candid production this is well worth investigating. 8/10 -- Joe Luna (4 August, 2009)