Trance Map (Evan Parker & Matthew Wright): Horizons Held Close

Although there have been more populous versions of Trance Map on Crepuscule in Nickelsdorf (Intakt, 2019), and Marconi's Drift (False Walls, 2024), Horizons Held Close presents the outfit pared back to its original core: the soprano saxophone of Evan Parker and the electronics of Matt Wright. Parker's solo work often reaches beyond the possibilities open to normal mortals into something with an electronic vibe, a realm he explored even more thoroughly through his Electro-Acoustic Ensemble, first heard in 1996. While you might think that with just two participants, the sonic responsibilities would be clearer, Wright's wizardry makes that a forlorn hope. Who has agency is never quite clear.

Instead, the two long cuts—each nudging the 25-minute marker—unfold not as dialogues but as proliferations—a welter of voices, a sonic strata in constant flux, a mesmeric journey-building, a domain that resists easy mapping. It evokes all manner of parallels: a rainforest insect chorus, a troop of Scottish pipers transported to the Central Asian steppe, spillage from a distant concert, radio interference. What might seem amorphous resolves, with patient attention, into a form of evolving minimalism where even the smallest inflection registers as seismic.

"Ulaanbadrakh" begins in a haze of scratchy off-white noise, through which Parker threads fragile, flute-like figures. Bell-like tolls surface, only to be swallowed by glitchy textures. At times, the chirruping soprano extends into tones so prolonged they suggest more than human endurance—is it accompanied by ghosts conjured from Wright's deft manipulations, or is it just Parker's prodigious technique? A question left unresolved. Cicada-like pulses underpin Parker's switch from plosive quacks to tightly looped staccato, eventually coalescing into an unbroken, radiant stream.

"Bayankhongor" sets Parker's querulous cries against reflective shards, refracted as if by a prism of circuitry. An underlying dull throb suggests a rave in the apartment downstairs, while coded bursts and key pops summon the percussive snap of castanets. Toward the close, Parker unleashes declamatory fanfares that recall the spirit of John Coltrane's cadenzas, soaring above Wright's dense layering. The final minutes peel away in a long descent, traces evaporating until nothing remains.

Horizons Held Close is less a duo than a hall of mirrors, where human breath and digital process conspire to generate a sound world at once immersive and elusive. Parker and Wright collapse distinctions between improviser and instrument, composition and environment, until what remains is less discourse than atmosphere—despite the title, an endlessly shifting horizon that always appears just beyond reach.