Weston Olencki, Laura Cocks

"Music for Two Flutes is one of those numerous documents of modern composition with deceptively humble titles. Both "Ceòl Meadhonach" and "SLUB", the pair of pieces presented on this digipak release from Hideous Replica, are certainly written for and performed by flutes, but what each actually sounds like transcends (yet does not hide) such a minimal approach. I’m revealing my own inexperience when I admit I have always associated the instrument with an almost saccharine whimsicality, all delicate twitter and flutter. Artists like Olencki and Cocks, however, are recent fixtures of an extensive avant-garde flute tradition: from Edgard Varèse’s Density 21.5 (1936, rev. 1946) and Luciano Berio’s Sequenza I (1958) to Toshio Hosokawa’s Works for Flute (2021) and Lao Dan’s bamboo flute improvisations, I have a lot of catching up to do. But one doesn’t need that knowledge to enjoy this music, which almost seems to answer my naïveté with a confident Oh, just wait." - Jack Davidson, Noise Not Music