Another stunningly beautiful package from Eli Keszler’s Rel Records. This one is the debut duo release from Keszler and Ashley Paul. Here Keszler plays bowed percussion and cymbals while Paul tears wild altissimo sustains from saxophone and clarinet, confusing the kind of static jazz minimalism of the Tamio Shiraishi/Sean Meehan duos with the sound art of Ikuro Takahashi and Harry Bertoia. The way Paul strains to modulate high, lonesome pitches has some of the melancholy grandeur of Kaoru Abe though the overall feel – constant high-tones spinning in clouds above subtle scrapes and roars - makes it feel closer to a more tactile take on eternal music than anything approaching free jazz. The dynamics of the flip are a ‘little’ more conventionally reed/drums, though Paul opts more for weird, inflating tones than anything approaching runs, while Keszler is more focused on expressive texture than time. The final track crosses strings with thuds of percussion that feels like a more improvised take on the electro-acoustic confusion of the first New Blockaders LP. Pressed on 160 gram copper plate pressed virgin vinyl, the record is housed in a black inner sleeve. The textured paper cover features a layered silk screened drawing while the inside contains grey pasted notes with an attached 8x24 inch three part multi-tone picture printed across a fold-out frosted vellum book. All silk screened, hand assembled and drawn by Ashley and Eli. The record comes in a limited hand numbered edition of 300 copies.

Great full-length album from Ashley Paul whose work with Eli Keszler and recent solo cassettes have been uniformly great. Here Ashley plays her own weirdly constructed songs that seem to be permanently teetering on the point of collapse, held up by fractured Corwood-style guitar, creaking and singing strings, bowed metal, saxophone and subtle zones of sustain and delay. This is a highly personal music that somehow ties up creepy basement singer-songwriter styles with avant garde strings, improv moves and exuberant non-musical techniques. A singular release, beautifully packaged in screenprinted art paper sleeves with obis and inserted artwork. Edition of 300 copies. Highly recommended.

Okay, so no one’s gonna make the argument that the ‘new’ ESP-Disk roster comes anywhere close to the perfectly articulated vision of their sainted first run. But this is one album, along with the recent Dunmall/Corsano side, that would’ve sat real nice in that first series. Keszler is, of course, a string-thinker of the magnitude of Alan Silva or Iancu Dumitrescu and here he presents two sidelong works. The first is a trio, with Keszler playing drums with installed motor set-up, crotales, guitar, prepared/riveted 4x10 foot sheet metal, microphones, spring harp, bass board and soprano and tenor harp, Ashley Paul on clarinet and Andrew Fenlon (fresh from American Idol!) on trumpet, tuba, French horn and trombone. Keszler plays fast, scatter-shot, knitting needle percussion over dooming metal tones and distant scraping drones, generating layers of strata that run from Neubauten-esque sex grit through Bertoia style overtones. Over on the flip Keszler plays piano with a motor set-up, switches, cymbal, crotales, snare drum and microphones while Sakiko Mori plays prepared piano. It comes over as something between Philip Corner’s demolition actions and a junkyard take on Dietrich Eichmann’s pugilistic vision. Hand-numbered edition of 300 copies with beautiful fold-out silkscreened inserts from Keszler.