FRED FRITH / LOTTE ANKER: review in THE GUARDIAN

THE GUARDIAN, 27^th 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.