Ernst Reijseger, Alan "Gunga" Purves

Live at the Music Academy of the West, Santa Barbara, April 12, 1987. Cello and percussion. Two Europeans conquering California with nothing but strings, drums, bones, bodhran and squeaky toys. This is the duo that gave us Cellotape & Scotchtape in 1982 - now captured live on American soil, over an hour of pure duo improvisation.

Reijseger needs no introduction: Dutch cellist extraordinaire, ICP Orchestra veteran, Clusone Trio with Han Bennink and Michael Moore, later Werner Herzog's go-to composer for film scores. Boy Edgar Prijs winner 1985. A musician who learned phrasing from saxophonists, pizzicato from bass guitarists, rhythm from drummers worldwide. He gets sounds out of the cello that shouldn't be possible. Purves is something else entirely. Scottish percussionist who landed in Amsterdam in 1975 following Sean Bergin and the Friends Roadshow theater group around Jango Edwards. Self-proclaimed "Professor of Squeakology." The man builds his own instruments and names them himself: brim bram, balacone, hemarimba. He's played with John Zorn on Massada and Cobra, with Rajesh Mehta, with anyone adventurous enough to let him bring his arsenal of tin whistles, rubber animals and frying pans.

Thirteen tracks from "Where Is The Light" to "Off The CA" - titles that mix the poetic with the whimsical. This is chamber music from another dimension, the meeting point between European free improv and something older, more theatrical, more unpredictable. Two masters at the peak of their telepathic connection.