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LP
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OM 085LP
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"Over the course of more than two decades, Philadelphia musician Bill Nace (guitar, taishogoto) has carved out unique collaborations across a wide range of contemporary improvisational practices, and though these range from solos to small groups, there's a keen ear toward the immediate, stark tug of duets. Some of these meetings are one-offs for now (saxophonists Evan Parker and Masayo Koketsu), while others are regular partnerships that have evolved across continual play and refinement (violinist Samara Lubelski and saxophonists Paul Flaherty and Steve Baczkowski). Many of these recordings have been released via Open Mouth, the label that Nace founded in 2004 which documents not only his work, but also that of fellow travelers in the worlds of experimental rock, noise, free improvisation, electronic music, and spectral folk in more or less limited editions. Rinse Cycle is the first recorded encounter between Nace and French saxophonist Sakina Abdou, whose searing and personally declarative solo CD, Goodbye Ground, was released by Relative Pitch at the close of 2022... An apt partner, Abdou's high-pitched wails and wide vibrato ululations are like a searing light out of which gradations in hue develop, closely valued and materialist, their afterimages bouncing in the retina and doubled by Nace's obsessively hammered double-string taishogoto. On the opening 'Vented, All in One (Part I),' Nace's instrument is made into a gauze of steel wool through distortion and looping, pulsing with ambient heat, a supple and narrowly dynamic platform that encourages Abdou's sawtooth alto in dry, metallic corkscrews and bright intervallic furrows. The close-miked egg shaker employed on '(Part II)' generates a series of grainy bursts in such odd succession that any traditional sense of rhythm is dispensed with. 'Mega Capacity' finds the two musicians acting as slabs that both support and push against one another, split-toned tenor brays and relentless peals of feedback coagulating into a mass that generates form, phrases spiking out in dissonant relief. Abdou is well capable of flywheel crescendos that recall Ayler and Brötzmann, but the pure-sound excavations that emerge are a curious complement to Nace's delicately controlled squall... It's difficult to know whether Rinse Cycle is the only LP that the pair will cut together (they also performed live at the venerable Philadelphia establishment Solar Myth), but as it stands this is a striking document of two improvisers pushing one another's boundaries." --Clifford Allen, August 2025
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