Fugu

Chicago guitarist Scott Fields originally wrote this music to accompany a dance piece and, though it was recorded in 1995, there’s a definite mid-20th century feel to it, redolent of interpretive dance and abstract expressionism. That’s got a lot to do with Robert Stright’s vibraphone ü the sound of a wittily raised eyebrow ü which can’t help echoing Bobby Hutcherson’s twitchy mallet work on Eric Dolphy’s Out To Lunch from 1964. The Dolphy comparison also extends to Fields’s spry storytelling, with episodic compositions such as “A Carrot Is A Carrot” unfolding like tartly amusing character studies. There is seriousness here, too, and Matt Turner’s cello ü played largely straight and sonorous ü lends the pieces a plaintive gravity. When his solos fly off into wilder, free regions, recalling Joel Freedman’s mid-1960s work with Albert Ayler, it’s like a tuxedo being ripped open, Hulk-style, from within. — The Wire

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everything is in the instructions

Lependorf is a composer of chamber music and opera intent on breathing new life into the Japanese shakuhachi. In these fragile duets with guitarist Scott Fields, you can hear him seeking to transcend the limits of the primitive instrument in a similar fashion to Yusef Lateef’s experiments with the Chinese globular flute The shakuhachi has a thin, haunting timbre — like breath made barely manifest — which Lependorf bends and manipulates with concentrated and deeply focused overblowing. But, for all his efforts (and it really does sound like hard work), he still delivers a largely one-dimensional song. Playing the more versatile acoustic guitar, Fields forays into delicate classical flourishes, deftly placed, tentative harmonics and hits of flattened minors around which Lependorf floats like a lost and disembodied soul. — The Wire 

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