Album of the week

Lori Goldston|Judith Hamann
Alloys
(Marginal Frequency)

I first became aware of Judith Hamann, a cellist from Melbourne, Australia, on Gossamers, a 2017 duo project with saxophonist Rosalind Hall released on Caduc, a tiny, consistently fascinating Vancouver label. The disc offered an alien soundscape of jitters and peals, throbs and plaints, its effect like coiled energy waiting indefinitely to slip its containment. Recorded by the artists themselves, Gossamers benefited from the keen-eared intervention of A.F. Jones, the sound artist and engineer who runs the Washington state-based mastering studio Laminal Audio.

Jones also runs Marginal Frequency, like Caduc a tiny label whose few offerings always prove worth investigation. Alloys, formally issued on January 22, finds Hamann working with a new partner, the Seattle-based cellist Lori Goldston. The new session, recorded by Eric Padget at Seattle’s Noise Noise Ouch Stop Studio, involves playing techniques and partnering strategies no less intense or intricate than those heard on Gossamers. But Alloys inhabits a wholly different sonic world, and once again that world is presented in fastidious detail partly through Jones’s labors.

Depending on how you choose to view it, Alloys comprises either two pieces or ten. Both the CD (available in a limited edition of just 150 copies) and the download format provide two long tracks, each just shy of 27 minutes long. But each track includes five individual titles. (In a way, this seems in keeping with Marginal Frequency’s roots as a cassette-only imprint; then again, the label’s other CD releases range from one track to 11.)

Listening to Alloys, you hear the two musicians separated clearly into two distinct stereo channels, but which cello is tickling which ear is not revealed. I won’t try to guess as to who’s who: Goldston and Hamann are too finely matched, and employ similar techniques to complement one another throughout. That’s not to say there’s little contrast, just that common cause overshadows individual display. It stands to reason: the dictionary definition of “alloy” is a metal formed by combining two metallic elements, or a metal and another substance, to increase strength and preclude corrosion.

The first piece, “Silver | Amalgam | Mother of Pearl | Felt | A Thin Piece of Whale Bone,” opens with tremulous high-end shimmers from one player, answered by the other with juddering bounced-bow rhythms. Just after the three-minute mark, the cellist in the left channel shifts to long, low bowed notes and figures; shortly, her partner follows suit. In another three minutes or so, a radiant high-end transition leads to a section of forceful chordal bowing, more assertive but never strenuous. Just before the 10-minute point, strings rubbed lightly on the left draw whisper-soft responses on the right. Then at 13 minutes in, the right-hand cellist takes the lead in a warm, rapt song accompanied by a drone from her counterpart. This peat-dark concord grows increasingly more dense and agitated, with one partner suddenly veering off on a squealing tangent. Then at 20 minutes, both players fall very nearly silent; the left-hand cello begins to sing soft and high, the right responding with reassuring low strums. This spare, lovely notion holds until close to the end, when the two players finally retreat in a pensive ending.

The regularity of these thematic shifts, along with the diplomacy with which they’re negotiated, suggest that the players observed some sort of premeditated compositional strategy. The second piece, “Carbon | Sitka | Rabbit Hide | Solder | Matter Attacking the Body,” proceeds much as the first one did, but mines a darker, more ruminative vein. Once more the cellists play with respect and restraint, again and again producing moments of haunting melancholy and arresting beauty. Unnerving suspense, too: check out the understated threnody that runs from 5:40 to 8:05. The tension from that passage never fully dissipates until the throaty chordal repose that arrives at 15:10, which leads to somber call-and-response at 16:40. Exchanges gradually grow more passionate, until the dam finally bursts, followed with an eerie coda.

Abetted by an acoustic resonant enough to let their instruments sing out, yet also captured with sufficient intimacy to let every brushed finger, wobbled bow, and shimmering overtone register clearly, Goldston and Hamann deliver two performances of ineffable mystery, sympathy, and beauty. As the album title suggests, they alloy their strong, distinctive individual idioms into something new, and durable.