#mark shippy

Back in the day, Shippy used to play with US Maple. While he’s no longer confined by the need to frame a singer, he retains a very rock-derived commitment to forward momentum. He knows the effectiveness of a big, solid sound, as well as the communicative effectiveness of a climax-oriented arc of events. Cunningham, on the other hand, has worked mainly in freer contexts, having recorded with Damon Smith and Patrick Shiroishi. During the encounters documented on this LP, each musician contributes tune-fragments that you might recall, rhythms that can be felt even when they can’t be counted and alloyed tones that are sound-worlds unto themselves.

Both of them make ample use of amplification to stake their claims on available space, and effects to fill said space with attention-getting activity. Shippy’s amply processed signals range from trebly, blurred notes to melting memories of rockabilly twang to woofer-ripping bursts of synthetic sound. Cunningham uses pedals to shift his instrument’s pitch into the floor-rattling range, giving this record a bass presence you would not expect from a violin-guitar duo. With pedals engaged, his playing swells and hums restlessly, using pitch-shifting to lend ballast and gravity to Shippy’s echo-enshrouded, not-quite-repeating patterns. But he can also flip to the other extreme, offering unprocessed bowing and plucking that dances agilely upon the guitarist’s unstable sound surfaces, and spark flicking formations that wreath Shippy’s more progression-oriented passages like St. Elmo’s fire sparking around a clipper ship’s rigging. Whether jointly hurtling or patiently drifting, leave a wake worth exploring.