Rip-Stop

Guitar and piano duets are a particular format. If they are actually some amazing conter examples in recorded history they remain quite few possibly due to the fact that these two instruments easily can be conflictual. One we always have in mind is the Jim Hall/Bill Evans »Undercurent« duet, but we can also think of Freddie Green and Count Basie???s interplay or the FMP Cecil
Taylor & Derek Bailey recorded concerts. In all cases pianist Sophie Agnel and guitarist Olivier Benoit don???t seem to rely on this tradition at all but rather on improvised genres and even musique concrète (the album being recorded at »la muse en circuit«, a place originally founded for contemporary audio experiments). I shall go back to our album now: four long tracks
pretty airy and full of majestic noises. The music sounds like if played very seriously, very concentrated and to me slightly stiff. It often seems like going through a filter of unallowed directions, plays, risks or simply not letting all possibilities these great players could use. What is the reason for that? I don???t really know. Could they be stuck into some conceptual idea of what???s possible and what???s not? See, it would make sense to stay in these fields if the music would say so but here it remains too often on the surface of it. Can???t we for good, and never come back to it after, state that AMM did all that once, and once means about fourty years ago. As an amateur I have heard all these piano sounds too many times and as a guitarist I have to hear what does what and how. I am really sorry because I think these two musicians are full of other much more incarnated ideas. Sincerely waiting for more.