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Crustose
Chris Alford
Label: Mystic Form Records
Released: 2026
Duration: 48:22
Views: 38
Tracks
1. windfall (diaspores) 05:28 2. fruticose 04:03 3. anastomosed 05:15 4. morphogenesis 05:57 5. hybrid colony 04:55 6. bioindicators 05:20 7. spongiophyton 07:40 8. foliose 06:17
Personnel
Chris Alford
guitarMajid Araim
mandolinAlbum Description
Chris Alford and Majid Araim meet somewhere between the forest floor and the edge of the known musical universe. The gutsy duo is an improvising unit working with mandolin, violin, acoustic guitars, and voices. Their music begins with the familiar sounds of acoustic strings but quickly moves beyond their expected territory. Strings are bowed, plucked, struck, scraped, muted, prepared, and coaxed into sounds that seem to come from somewhere beyond the fretboards and hollow chambers that try to contain them.
Their approach is immediate, playful, and highly interactive. Notes are sprinkled as well as hammered into place. A sound appears, hangs briefly in the air, and leaves a ripple of interaction behind it. One gets the sense the two are daring one another to boost not the intensity but the level of surprise. Like mycelium beneath the forest floor, their interactions form unexpected connections. Familiar and strange at once, the music grows through focus, curiosity, and discovery, becoming a small ecosystem unique to each time and place.
There is no autopilot here. Attention to subtle shifts keeps everything in flux. Muted, wide intervallic leaps are juxtaposed with a surge of melodic fervor. At times the music is sparse enough for a single note to feel enormous; at others, it thickens into a dense, shifting thicket of activity.
Crustose takes its name from a form of lichen that clings tightly to stone, becoming almost inseparable from it. The music, a collection of improvisations and text scores, works in a similar way: intimate, mysterious, slightly peculiar, and always in the process of becoming.
recorded 10/19/24 by Chris Alford
https://chrisalford.bandcamp.com/album/crustose
Album uploaded by Chris Alford
