Mota, Manuel & David Grubbs

***Lacrau is the first U.S. release of music featuring the legendary Portuguese guitarist’s guitarist MANUEL MOTA. Mota’s mysterious, uncompromising, resolutely personal approach to the instrument has most often been captured on solo recordings—and typically of an immersive length, such as Rck, a 5-CD release from 2013. Lacrau captures the ambience of a warm Sunday afternoon in late fall in Lisbon when longtime friends Mota and DAVID GRUBBS sat down for this waking dream of a first duo performance. The session unfolds with a real-time, documentary feel in which athematic, non-repeating musical gestures are rendered with an extreme sensitivity to microscopic soundworlds brought about by fingertips, strings, and tube amplifiers. These explorations are as apt to find emotional weight in the solitary note in all its fret-buzzing glory as they are in unexpected turns of phrase briefly referencing blues and jazz.