Tired tonight. Only four more working days until I get a couple of weeks break though. It would be an understatement to say I am looking forward to it. Anyway today I have been listening to a new CD by the Berlin duo of trumpeter Axel Dorner and guitarist Erhard Hirt, released on the previously unknown to me Acheulian Handaxe label and titled Black Box, after the venue in Münster where these live recordings were made. I’ve really enjoyed listening to this music while out and about walking over the past few days. It is loud and eventful enough to be able to hear properly with other sounds around me. Quite music obviously doesn’t work well when out with an iPod, and droney flatter music tends to be harder to follow, but Black Box is a good solid album of improvised music, which always makes for a good walking / commuting companion.

Dorner and Hirt are simply credited with trupet and guitar on this album, but as you might suspect its much more complex than that. There is an awful lot o extended technique here, and also some live processing of sounds, primarily from Hirt. Only in odd places do we hear the sound of plucked or strummed strings, and mostly the guitar is shrouded in a mass of electronic sounding effects and treatments, though I think the trumpet has its fair share as well. Many of Hirt’s sounds are unfashionably synthetic, sythesised reworkings of the guitars sounds crammed through some kind of processing. He does not worry about keeping his sound within the earthy, textural areas we often expect from guitarists these days. There are buzzes and squawks and flutters and fizzing explosions that bounce in and out of the music in quite wild, dramatic gestures. His sound for me lands closer to that of Thomas Lehn’s synth or Hugh Davies’ invented instruments than Keith Rowe’s guitar. He sounds very comfortable with his approach though, as he should after many CD releases. (Somewhere I know I own something else by Hirt, but I’ll be damned if I can track it down) and he wraps his individual soundworld around the rasps and splutters of Dorner’s familiar trumpet inventions with great confidence.

I really like much of the music here. The two pieces are similar in style and structure, busyish little collisions of the two musicians’ sounds, acoustic and electronic sounds wrapped about each other and threaded through the gaps left behind. The pace isn’t explosive, so we don’t ever quite reach frantic levels, but there is plenty enough going on here at any one time. The musical conversation we hear is a rich, talkative one however, more about small incidents and the immediate response to them rather than any wider or layered structure that develops over time. The range of sounds and dynamics that come and go in a short space of time is impressive, underlining the obvious skill of the musicians and their confidence playing together.

Black Box probably won’t be to everyone’s taste. Those that prefer Dorner in quieter, reduced collaborations may dislike his level of input here. The choice of sounds coming from Hirt’s guitar won’t be to everyone’s taste either, but fans of improvisation should enjoy the intense interactions here and the listening skills of the two musicians involved. I have really enjoyed these two pieces, they are a lot of fun without being a joke in any way and thoroughly adventurous in their own little manner. Fine music.