Label: Pyroclastic Records, 2021

Personnel - Mary Halvorson: guitar; Sylvie Courvoisier: piano.

Displaying seriously brilliant musicianship, guitarist Mary Halvorson and pianist Sylvie Courvoisier are two singular voices united in a powerful duo to explore notions of time. The result of their collaboration is Searching For the Disappeared Hour, a record that reflects the colorful sounds and inventive textures that populate their minds.

Three of the twelve tracks are credited to the duo, including “Four-Point Interplay”, where the prepared piano takes a percussive role and the ruminative guitar threatens to morph into indie rock behavior.

Albeit catchy, the cited tune can’t be compared in terms of sonic pleasure with Halvorson’s “Golden Proportion” and Courvoisier’s “Lulu’s Second Theorem”. The former - a collage of vignettes with an Erik Satie feel - opens the record by enlacing classical and avant-jazz ambiances through dissonant, pitch-distorted guitar in strategic balance with the ebbs and flows of the piano; in turn, the latter song grooves with highly rhythmic ostinatos, odd-metered passages and expeditious melodic anatomies before shifting halfway to more reflective and abstract zones.

Two other Courvoisier compositions had an incredibly positive effect on me. One of them is “Moonbow”, which, after being playfully set in motion, segues into a serene 4/4 pop progression whose textural base is alternately provided by each musician. After that, we have a more accelerated section where the guitar whoops with timbres that recall slot machines, video games and robotic language. The other song is “Mind Out of Time”, a poignant, dark aural experience that seems to want to unravel secrets in the depths of our souls. By the end, compelling unison lines are briefly incorporated without losing a bit of the texture.

Halvorson penned “Bent Yellow”, a bluesy plunge that feels bold in the interaction, angular in the theme and resolute in the proceedings, as well as “Gates & Passes”, a sad, shimmering ballad sunk in a myriad of interesting effects.

The guitar playing and pianism of these amazing musicians are so rich and satisfying that the album catches our senses with striking assurance.