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Alvin Lucier - Criss-Cross/Hanover (Black Truffle, 2018)

Major late-career entry for the legend Alvin Lucier here, released on Oren Ambarchi's Black Truffle. "Criss-Cross" is Lucier's first composition for guitar and written for performers Ambarchi and Stephen O'Malley. Ambarchi in the left channel, O'Malley on the right, and they "improvise on a single semitone" producing a woozy and pulverizing tone falling in and out of sync, increasing and decreasing speeds, I hate to say stuff like this but you can almost hear other sounds being conjured up by the thick drone, just around the edges, although at least one of them is the disorienting sound of e-bows on strings. Quite something; to be played loud. "Hanover" features Ambarchi and O'Malley on guitars again, joined by a variety of players on alto and tenor sax, violin, piano and bowed vibraphone. The piece is inspired by Lucier's father (appearing on the cover) and a reimagining of that ghostly departed band. It's slow, heavy on spectral tones. Very haunting and beautiful.

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