Search - Evan Parker, Sainkho Namtchylak :: Mars Song

A tough nut

N. Dorward | Toronto, ON Canada | 03/16/2002

(3 out of 5 stars)

"Evan Parker, Sainkho Namchylak--two of the most remarkable improvisors in free music today. But put them together in a disc-long set of duets....& somehow it seems to me this is mostly fairly intractable music. I found it very hard going, & lacking in much actual drama or suspense--each musician does his/her thing, excellently but without actually producing anything that's more than the sum of its parts. (& it is also frankly pretty tough going in the squeakier bits.) It's an infinitely less humane & engaging than Namchylak's duet disc with Ned Rothenberg, _Amulet_, which I'd recommend much more strongly. With Evan Parker discs sprouting up like mushrooms in the 1990s, I can't see that this need be a high-priority purchase for any but avid collectors of the principals' work."