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CD version, with 4 extra tracks non available on the LP version. Sparrow Nights is the first studio album from the furious duo of pedal steel player Heather Leigh and saxophone legend Peter Brötzmann.
Their collaboration has quickly gained a well-earned reputation for
their cutting-edge music and frenetic but sensuous playing. Recorded and
mastered in Vienna by Martin Siewert. Features artwork by Brötzmann; LP version comes in a heavy, '60s style tip-on cover.
"There is complexity in simplicity, and Sparrow Nights
is Brötzmann and Leigh's most enduring record to date. A series of
emotionally rich and boldly elucidated tonal and timbral exchanges
played like compositions on pedal steel and reeds, the tracks (released
as a six-track LP and ten- track CD) are cold-forged minimalist blues
motifs dragged from instrumental laments. After three years playing
together Brötzmann and Leigh's connection and understanding is by now
both cerebral and deeply invested in the physical and sensory
possibilities of their combined sound, while retaining a melancholic
distance. Within this duo there is fluidity - neither is the anchor -
and these recordings sound with as much variety as the sea. At times Sparrow Nights
carries the clarity and poeticism of still water and open horizon
("This Word Love"), and at others it contains the elemental and
ferocious roar of white water breakers on black rocks ("This Time
Around"). On their previous three live albums (Ears Are Filled With Wonder, Sex Tape, and Crowmoon
(2018)), the duo have developed an intimate and intense language that
manifests here as a focus on power and control, where figures blasted of
unnecessary decoration are drawn from the shadows and smoke of
collapse. The studio setting also allows Brötzmann to bring a broader
range of reeds than in live scenarios: where previously he has played
primarily tenor, clarinet and tarogato with Leigh, here he delivers the
heat of alto and the low pressure of bass saxophone and clarinet.
Brötzmann's duo with Leigh continues to trace a fresh new arc in his
trajectory, and this release also falls at a time when Leigh releases Throne
(EMEGO 257CD/LP), her most song-based record to date. Here as a studio
duo they play a new-old blues for times of complexity, noise and chaos,
continuing to redefine and re-sound possibilities for improvised
music."--JLA.