DAVE HOLLAND/SAM RIVERS

English contrabass monster Dave Holland and Sam Rivers made a two part album of duets for Paul Bley's  Improvising Artists Inc. record label in the mid 1970's.  The recordings are abnormally special:  The two men maintain an improvised musical dialogue that sounds like two old friends catching up in front of a fire with a bottle of especially good wine.  They delicately dance around each others statements reacting to the combined sounds in nano-time, with a level of empathy and attention rarely heard in duet recordings.  Sam switches instruments throughout the albums:  tenor sax, piano, flute soprano sax.  

These recordings are rich with content.  They are expressions of a level of communication that hardly exists in the human experience in any form, let alone musically.  We are lucky to have these conversations documented.  

On a side note:  The Improvising Artists Inc. small catalogue of releases is flush with rare gems.  Sun Ra has an album of solo piano.  Not only is this album great, it is rare to hear Sun Ra without his Arkestra, and even when he's performing with his ensemble, he tends to leave the soloing to the rest of his band.  The label also sports a two totally badass logo designs, only one of which I have the time to find online:

I don't know about you, but I think that would be a great tattoo ;)

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