Powers Rolin Duo

Powers Rolin Duo

Clearing

Astral Editions

***“'Peridot' dives right in, and so I will. It’s a gemstone, peridot, and may become your favorite gemstone (as it has mine since I’ve dug in to its history and cultural significance). I like volcanoes and volcanic land formations. 'Peridot,' the musical piece presented here by Powers/Rolin, is soundtrack to memories of in-person witnessed lava floes and the infinite parade of Herzogian docu-footage of rivers of fire and constructive destruction. There are edits or augmentations evident, creating (or revealing) form, in the tradition of Teo Macero’s work on In A Silent Way. Because rarely does the beauty of a musical moment survive the translation from performance to recording without losing that crucial thing that made it a once-in-a-lifetime happening without judicious and usually minimal manipulation. We overdub, we mix, we edit. We master, we distribute. If you’ve ever been out in the woods with some friends and come upon a little place in a creek that’s just big enough to get in for something resembling a ‘swim’ but is more like a ‘dip’, and no-one has brought costumes designed explicitly for swimming so some begin to disrobe completely, and then you do too even though you feel awkward and never really wanted to be naked around these people (or, really, almost anyone) but do it anyway, and the embarrassment never really goes away during the whole time you luxuriate in the cold water but almost does again and again as something in you realizes that this is the best and...

Powers Rolin Duo

Strange Fortune

Astral Editions

***"Underground music is filled with all kinds of characters, personalities, and peculiarities. Rare are the musical/artistic soul mates who have forged life, as well as creative, partnerships. Foundationally, the work of couples like Alice and John Coltrane or La Monte Young and Marian Zazeela set standards of artists who share a complete aesthetic worldview, in which the pair complement and lift each other to higher vistas, the newly created work completely collaborative and unable to be untangled from its divine union. More recently, soul mate musicians like Wayne Rogers and Kate Village, or Rick Brown and Sue Garner, continue in this seemingly impossible tradition, a lifetime of musical co-expression. Jen Powers and Matthew Rolin, as the Powers/Rolin Duo, are the latest, fully realized musical version of this unique dynamic. On their new album Strange Fortune, for the Astral Spirits sister label Astral Editions, the pair offers a sage-scented, instrumental love poem, which straddles the lines of psychedelic and folk idioms. Over the course of four extended tracks, including the sidelong “Amaranth,” showers of 12-string acoustic guitar and hammered dulcimer mix to dizzying heights as the two players weave in and out of each other's melodies, finishing each other's musical sentences. The sounds of the instruments commingle, yielding a cosmic sense of compatibility as if there is little distinction between the players. Over the past few years, the Powers/Rolin duo has spread its developments over a string of limited LP releases and hard to find cassettes. Strange Fortune, which was recorded...