The believers in dramaturgical loquacity as an expedient to carve a point in someone’s mind will never accept that words mean nothing (except for credulous specimens affected by bullshit-spewing recitals, whatever the area of so-called knowledge). Lorin Benedict and Ron Heglin use wordlessness as the primary expressive tool, a phonetic indagation occurring via instinctive fluxes whose unusual musicality is astounding.
While Heglin draws essential materials from studies in North Indian vocal music – besides the expertise as a trombone and tuba player – Benedict’s uniqueness is definitely rooted in scat singing, of the extraterrestrial variety. The pairing of styles may appear improbable on paper, yet it works perfectly as soon as a flow is established. When a listener is not concerned with hidden conceptual traps and “wonder-what-it-means” mental labyrinths, greeting the interaction between extremely human vocal tones in their purest ethos comes easy.
Still, the “experimental factor” remains at the forefront of what we hear. In terms of asymmetrical rhythms and real-time pitch alteration, the couple fears no one: we imagine a reverse “theme”, or enjoy the accidental intersection of malleable patterns, but the hypothetical diagram of those events doesn’t reveal traces of commonly intended sequential designs. What we get instead is the uninhibited delineation of an unclassifiable substance, its states varying from semi-solid to mercurially ungovernable. Incidentally, Benedict is also a physicist; I wonder if his researches in that field have influenced the incredible jargon he gifts us with.
I have expressed my fondness for Benedict’s artistry many times in the past, whereas this was a first meeting with Heglin’s creative intuition, which gave me additional pleasure. Now switch off the conventional side of your reasoning, and open the receptive channels to the unorthodox calls of two genuine prodigies. It takes a brilliant brain to articulate wisdom without getting lost in the meanders of uninformed nonsense; Duos And Solos is an excellent antidote to that sort of mullock.
MASSIMO RICCI. TOUCHING EXTREMES. 