Almost anything Bosetti gets involved with can be guaranteed to possess a certain amount of unusualness, for better or worse, and this collaboration with the fine pianist Chris Abrahams (known for his work with The Necks, among others is no exception, pluses and minuses included.
The opening track, "Eye", is quite lovely — delicate, even romantic piano over a field of abstract clicks and static, interspersed with deep, dark moans (apparently sourced from voice) and hazy, metallic, echoing tones; a fine balance of the lush and the edgily uncomfortable. "Reservoirs" provides an interesting contrast, Abrahams playing spare, single notes, like an astringent Tristano with (presumably) Bosetti offering several layers of roughly corresponding electronic blips; the piece ends up sounding somewhat like a bastard child of Nancarrow, not bad. The first of two covers follows, Steve Lacy's "Esteem", for which Bosetti has written lyrics, sung in a soft, high-pitched voice, strangely reminiscent in both timbre and approach to Annette Peacock. It's an odd tack though, to this writer's ears, a largely successful one, appropriately tentative and fragile, beautifully offset by Abrahams' sensitive playing.
A pleasant enough quasi-ambient works follows, then the disc's second cover, Milton Nascimento's "Bridges" with Gene Lees' lyrics once again sung by Bosetti, this time more conventionally, though with an appealing graininess. Nonetheless, the overall effect is surprisingly sentimental; it's tough to tell whether it's tongue-in-cheek or not. If so, one wonders why they bothered, if not, well, it's rather forgettable. "Greenhouses" is the longest cut and meanders a bit as the piano, with a similar approach as that heard previously in "Reservoirs", is accompanied by electronics, both skittering atop and thunking somewhat tediously below — fleeting free improv over death metal rhythm, not such a hot combo. Oppressive, in fact, though no doubt intentionally so. The closing "La Nourriture" is another odd one, with spoken text (in French) over, once again, single piano notes, here shadowing the voice, and vague, ghostly, electronically enhanced vocal choruses. Unsettling but also rather unsatisfying.
A mixed bag, then, worthwhile for its first half, less so for its second.
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