from the Bandcamp Web page for the album being discussed
Due Pesci (two fishes) is an improvising duo, whose two (of course) members are drummer Ron Pelletier and Thom Blum working with electro-acoustic gear in real time. The pair came together in 2016 to explore possibilities for bonding and dependency across highly contrasting resources. At the beginning of this month they released their debut album, Buon Viaggio (good trip), for both streaming and download on Bandcamp. (Delivery conditions being what they are, we are very unlikely to see much by way of physical distribution while in a pandemic.) The nine tracks of the album document live improvisations, which they played at the Gallery 41 Studio, beginning in the middle of 2018 and continuing into 2019.
The synthesis of dependency and opposition is illustrated on the cover of the album, show above. The two fish of the group’s name, basically identical, are arrayed in a yin-yang pattern with the suggestion that they are swimming in a circle continuously. As each fish tries to get closer to the other, the two will swim faster and may be seen to fuse. This serves as a metaphor for how the complementary resources can seek out, and often find, a sense of fusion over the course of the improvisations documented on this album.
There is a similar metaphorical merging of complementary semantics of “play.” In the musical sense the concept is one of mastery of one’s instrument, but the sense of diversion or pastime is equally relevant to these improvisations. The listener thus encounters a semantic fusion of playing (in one sense) for the sake of playing (in the other sense). Then there is the added playfulness of giving each track a title in Italian. (For the most part, these can be usefully handled by Google Translate.)
Taken as a whole, the album serves up an engaging journey of discovery for the attentive listener, decidedly a “good trip!”
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