Peter Evans, Mike Pride: A Window, Basically

Trumpet meets drums in a series of superbly balanced exchanges on A Window, Basically. When the trumpet belongs to Peter Evans then not only virtuosity is guaranteed, but also an acute musicality. Nothing exists purely for effect. And double down on that when Mike Pride helms the trapset. Long-time colleagues, the pair recorded the seven cuts over a two-year period, although their history goes back much further. While together they constitute two-thirds of the band Pulverize The Sound, this album represents their first duo release.

The format holds no mysteries for either. Evans' discography includes Q (More Is More, 2018) with percussionist Levy Lorenzo, while Pride performs with cornetist Kirk Knuffke on The Exterminating Angel (NotTwo, 2012). But more than instrumental compatibility, what characterizes this album proves to be a deep empathy borne of disregard for boundaries and trust in each other's surefooted navigation of the resultant uncharted territories.

In some respects it manifests as a blowing date, though not one where either abdicates control or precision. Evans unleashes a wonderful variety of tones—everything a trumpet can do and some that should be beyond it—but with an internal logic, which means that it all hangs together as coherent statements. Pride avoids matching gesture-for-gesture, but his timbrally detailed rhythmic carpet accents and comments without derailing momentum, and neither deflecting Evans nor constraining his options.

On several pieces, the pair traces parallel trajectories: jabbing trumpet arrayed against a rolling tattoo, tempered by Evans' wistful melodicism on "Substance X," modulating from brassy hesitancy to hyperspeed buzz on "Substance T," constantly morphing drum patterns on "Substance M." Elsewhere textural dialogues intrude, in the metal reverberations and autoharp string plucks in the first section of "Substance Z" and the interplay of squeaks and staccato exclamations on "Substance 5."

Although similarly eerie scrapes and indeterminate long tones usher in the spacy soundworld of "Substance P," the cut ultimately takes an unexpected turn. After the first five minutes, three minutes of silence ensues, broken by a multi-tracked hubbub of contrasting trumpet voices and a drum cavalcade supplemented by reversed audio of an additional drum track. It makes for a bracing ending, referencing a shared fascination for processing techniques not otherwise in evidence on a set of adventurous but accessible duets.