Keith Fullerton Whitman/Greg Davis

Whitman and Davis are multi-tasking friends and collaborators who spread their energies into many musical styles and projects, including jazz, drum & bass, new folk, drone and recent experiments by both in the area of vintage and disused technology (Davis’ Somnia and Whitman’s Multiples, both on Kranky). This album excerpts choice moments from their duo laptop tour in 2002. The idea of short passages rather than featuring one full-length performance document is a wise one, giving a broader sense of the duo’s capabilities over time and dispensing with often tedious dead spots that crop up during live improvisation. The artists’ choices of source sounds are mostly muted and presented with great attention to silences. The lengthiest piece, from a radio performance at WNYU-FM, exemplifies their careful layering of resonant chimes, bells, metal and glass sounds. These organic sounds and acoustic instruments take centre stage elsewhere and are always in balance with their more evasive, digital counterpoints. Rarely does an improvising duo, especially with laptops, attempt such richly dense and melodic work as these two have here.