THE GUARDIAN, 27th Feb 2015
John Fordham
FRED FRITH & LOTTE ANKER: EDGE OF
THE LIGHT (Intakt)
The
Copenhagen saxophonist Lotte Anker
and the versatile composer and contemporary guitar pioneer Fred Frith enjoy each other’s company, and
it sounds like it. Frith loves the duo setting for its urge toward “meeting,
conversing, challenging each other, changing your mind, not changing your mind,
running together for the fun of it”, and Anker describes this session as having
been a “timeless bubble … that was small, but in a way also vast”. Anker’s rich
saxophone palette takes in skimming falsetto sounds like Evan Parker’s, but she
also has a soulfully desolate quaver that recalls Albert Ayler, and a sense of
narrative drama that keeps her in compelling motion between ghostly
impressionistic effects and brusquely percussive exclamations. Frith confronts
Anker with flinty and splintered Derek Bailey-esque
interrogations, but also partners her with astonishing resourcefulness – a kind
of onrushing swing on Anchor Point, and galloping hooves on Run Don’t Hide,
allied with hand-drumming effects, glowing electronic textures, bowed-metal
noises, and the sounds of somebody shovelling gravel or searching among heavy
objects. He’s been an extraordinary sound source for decades, and he isn’t
letting up.
