John Kameel Farah – Piano, Synthesizer and Electronics

Nick Fraser – Drums

This album documents a thoughtful journey exploring the lines between improvisation and composition. The intimate duo challenge convention and are consistently inventive, drawing new connections.  Farahser’s underlying creative process began with Farah and Fraser congregating in the studio to laydown a foundation of 26 impromptu duets. As such, piano and drum kit often occupy the foreground of the record. Following these sessions, the pair extracted their favourites with the idea that Farah would continue to work with the audio, superimposing addition elements and applying various treatments with guidance from Fraser. The result, both in terms of sound and approach, defes categorization, and yet manages to embody everything that makes improvised exchanges so vital, especially between two artists that know each other well. Both players remain dynamic, responsive and powerfully invested throughout, discovering unexpected convergences, cultivating mutual textures, and veering together into other unforeseen spaces.

The album opens with the ghostly, chromatic, and ambient-infected “Flatland,” but soon the pair proceed to unfurl a web of woven, cascading pulses on the dizzying “Twigs.” The nimble-fngered “Insect Mountain” begins with Fraser and Farah engaging in a fdgety pointillist counterpoint but soon expands into larger figures whose contour is traced by brass synth tones. “Waltz”, the album’s briefest track, is built on a recurring piano figure that dissolves into glitchy fragmentation, with crackling freeform drums derived Fraser’s playing but digitally smeared beyond recognition. Though much of the eerie “Dirge” maintains a slinky rhythmic foundation, it
erupts temporarily into a blizzard of abstracted instrumentation, led by some of Fraser’s most urgent drumming on the record, and electronically mangled piano glissandi. In spite of its title and initial textural orientation, “Baby Birds” ends up quite explosive with strident synths and thunderous acoustic playing from both parties

“The Churn” is a ghostly offering that almost evokes a futuristic dub of Paul Bley with its deep resonances and lyrical chromaticism. “Elevator” closes the record and features Fraser inhabits a decidedly ethereal space while Farah offers warm gliding synths, and waves of tumbling piano that fold in upon on themselves. Farahser not only documents two of Canada’s most distinctive and important talents creating together outside of stylistic conventions, it also furnishes fresh responses to two pertinent questions Fraser asked himself at the outset of this endeavour: “What can be done to/with improvisation to alter it?” and “where does improvisation
end and composition start?”