ROOM

Individually, guitarists Nels Cline and Julian Lage have played in many settings. Cline, a member of Wilco, has worked with Julius Hemphill, Charlie Haden, and many others; Lage’s extensive resume includes Gary Burton and Yoko Ono. *Room* is generally quiet, but things can get charged, and the album doesn’t lack edge. On Lage’s “Calder,” the pair play acoustic guitars, and you can hear traces of unplugged John McLaughlin. Cline’s “Racy” references blues, but it also spirals off in other directions. “Freesia/The Bond” opens like a ballad, goes on to hint at non-Western music, and wraps up in a pop-like mode.

As tempting as it may be to imagine two stellar guitarists meeting for the first time in a recording studio and just going for it, that isn't quite what happens here -- even though the sense of spontaneity and energy at work on Room would suggest just that. Nels Cline and Julian Lage, guitarists from two very different backgrounds (and generations) had played together live before this date. The former has been making music since the 1970s in settings ranging from fiery vanguard jazz to punk to roots rock and more. Lage is a prodigy coming into his own. He has worked in jazz and classical music and has been celebrated largely as a traditionalist. On Room, each player brought only an acoustic and electric guitar; there are no effects pedals. The recordings were done absolutely live. Both men brought material, but it's not the formal compositions that delight so much as the kinetic dialogue that occurs within them. The simple, nearly classical counterpoint and harmonics at work in the brief opener "Abstract 12" build on a recurring pattern which gives birth to intimate scalar interplay -- some of it quite free.

What do you get when you take two masterful instrumentalists with very divergent stylistic outputs and put them in a studio to play together...