Sculptor, installation artist, and seasoned improvisor Rie Nakajima has been friends with David Toop for many years, and the two became accustomed to their regular chats – on art, music, and food – to the point that when face-to-face meetings were prohibited for a spell, they transferred their musings to email. They noticed that the style of their back and forth had changed, forcing a level of creative thought that, in Toop’s own words, wasn’t »normal or natural«, and when they reconvened in the spring of 2022, they realised their reality had shifted. Of course, if you’ve been following either artist, you may have already stumbled across last year’s excellent »Music for Voilà«, and this set examines their interaction with mic-ed sculptures and small instruments at an earlier point of development. »The word ›sculpture‹ still has connotations of a solid thing, with weight and mass,« explains Toop. »What if sculpture was just a duration, an empty cup held in the hand until it disappears.«

Certainly, the duo’s reaction to the objects in their vicinity on this uncompromising set is fascinatingly distinctive. It’s never completely clear what it is you’re hearing, but each hushed sound – of intermittent rattling, scraping, humming, and chiming – provokes an awareness of the environment and its textures and timbres that subtly strokes the senses. Working in long form (the final act weighs in at almost half an hour), Toop and Nakajima give themselves the time and space to truly meditate on their themes, letting single dissonances ring out and rhythms hang in the dead air. It’s free improvisation, sure, but unhitched from any of that sprawling scene’s hackneyed tropes. By the end of the set, you’ll feel as if you’ve been hit with a gust of fresh air.