Lao Dan / Vasco Trilla: New Species

A fortuitous meeting between Spanish drummer Vasco Trilla and Chinese reed player Lao Dan at a festival in the latter's homeland led to a concert and subsequent studio session. Yet it is that first encounter, recorded at Old Heaven Books in Shenzhen, a hub of the country's improvised-music scene, that New Species preserves. Both musicians share an experimental outlook and prove well matched, with Dan among the better-known Chinese practitioners to Western ears and Trilla commanding a formidable reputation as one of Europe's most adventurous percussionists.

There is a certain amount of feeling each other out, not evident in any tentativeness, but more in the sense of all the acute listening going on, most obvious in the opening "You Are You." An introductory passage of lyrical tenor saxophone pauses to give way to a burst of relaxed resonant drums, before both combine. Dan maintains his silken thread, but makes increasingly frequent sorties into falsetto cries and multiphonics. Although Trilla likewise continues his measured approach, he gradually coarsens and serrates the pulse in response. 

They find common ground in drone-like textures too. Trilla utilizes vibrating toys which he deploys variously on cymbals and drum heads, while Dan creates unbroken circular-breathed lines on both saxophone and flute. A searching restlessness means that these gambits rarely remain static. On "New Species 1," the drones transform first into throaty reed gurgling and accompanying gongs, then altissimo eruptions spiced by tappy interjections, before alighting on a rolling momentum.

Although not averse to Peter Brötzmann-style intensity, Dan's study of classical bamboo flute gives his expression a distinctive character. His mastery illuminates "Tea Horse Road." It begins airily as the bucolic blowing evokes the archetypal misty mountains of East Asian art, against a backdrop of tinkles and deep reverberations. But before long Dan introduces extended techniques, extracting multiple voices from his percolating flutters in a way which would make Evan Parker proud. Sadly, both this track and the other to feature flute fade out, perhaps having succinctly made their point.

New Species captures two highly individual talents uncovering a vocabulary that leaves ample room for surprise and refinement, and in so doing proposes novel routes for expanding the hoary sax/drum tradition.