Dominic Lash / Pat Thomas: New Oxford Brevity

For the potential listener seeing Dominic Lash's name on a record sleeve, there is the conundrum of which of his guises this might signal. While primarily known as a bassist, he pursues his craft across several areas, from straightforward free improv, as heard on Discernment (Spoonhunt, 2021), to composition based left field jazz, with his Quartet on Limulus (Spoonhunt, 2021), to experimental and contemporary music (with the Set Ensemble).

But none of those apply here. Reason being, he took up electric guitar during lockdown, and that is the instrument which he plays on New Oxford Brevity. To compound the options, his collaborator here Pat Thomas, presents a similarly perplexing prospect, performing on electronics and keyboards, as well as the acoustic piano he prefers this time out.

Of course all these guises are not separate entities, and when Lash and Thomas are improvising freely, what they do is informed by their entire experience. Lash's fretwork falls somewhere in the ballpark of Derek Bailey and John Russell, though he is not a clone of either. He brings the same adventurous sensibility which permeates his bass improvising, but with added bite courtesy of the electricity and FX pedals. Thomas is famously unconstrained, often exploring the physicality of the piano. He can be minimalist too in his investigations of a restricted palette, channeling some of the discipline he wields in the collective Ahmed, heard to such stunning effect on Super Majnoon (East Meets West), (Otoroku, 2019).

Across six tracks the pair engage in continuous dialogue, sometimes dense and bracing, at other times spacious and dramatic, but always invigorating. At best, as on the mercurial "Niyyah" the impact is exhilarating, when prone to sudden changes of weather they shift between woody thumpings and scratchy staccato, via explosive piano crashes, to delicate chiming guitar and near pastoral reverie. Other cuts more thoroughly mine a particular vibe, like the succinct percussive interchanges of "Slide 28 Please," or the spare sounds hung in space of "The Woodstock Shuffle." But whatever the gambit, the chemistry between the two men is such that the results remain both fascinating and, most importantly, enjoyable.