Misha Feigin: Both Kinds of Music

All seven of these duos pair Feigin's instruments with other strings: dobro (Elliot Sharp), electric guitar (Davey Williams), cello (Craig Hultgren), violin (LaDonna Smith, who also dances on a wooden box on "Balalaikofrenia"), and guitar and banjo (the one and only Eugene Chadbourne). Feigin and co. achieve a remarkable similarity of texture throughout the disc's shifts in instrumentation. This music avoids easy rhythms and common tonalities, as well as, ultimately, facile categorization. Feigin is a masterful and evocative player who displays a determined modernism and generally avoids the folk clichés that one might expect from a balalaika player: there's no Russian wedding reception music being played here.

Through it all, Feigin creates a hypnotic music built of small gestures. An excellent outing.

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