Despite both artists enjoying remarkably intensive careers which have seen them collaborate with many of the finest talents operating in free-improvisation, experimental and classical music, Pas de Deux marks the auspicious first ever encounter between Swiss drummer Fritz Hauser and Portuguese marimba maestro Pedro Carneiro.

Across seven sequential passages, sculpted from recordings made at Lisbon’s Namouche studio last winter, this newly-formed percussive duo evince an automatic affinity, exploring a wealth of textures and tones in a dialogue of graceful tessellations, which Hauser refers to in his liner notes as, “a dance of sounds, noises and silence.”

Pas de Deux documents formidable flights of febrile imagination, combining non-idiomatic disruption with the rigours of classical training, its creators coaxing glorious gambits of prodigious extended technique and honed practice from their armoury.

At times, it’s as if the pair were tapping into the fantastic time-warping ceremonials adorning the surrealistic pages of Raymond Roussel’s Impressions of Africa, an alien, exotic, quasi-spiritual ambience pervading their pointillist tapestries, come alive via vibrant paroxysms of ringing metal and flayed timber.

And there are other dreamlike pleasures here too, as Hauser and Carneiro summon tumbles of complementing resonance, brokering bursts of pulsing precipitation in sympathy with the heavy rain falling beyond the penumbra of their grand percussive summit, redolent of childhood days spent chasing water-streaked shapes across windowpanes and numerous crystalline scenes from Karel Zeman’s magical stop-motion fantasia, Inspirace.

All music by Fritz Hauser and Pedro Carneiro

Recorded by Joaquim Monte at Namouche, Lisbon, Portugal on November 30, 2022 | Mixed and mastered by Thomas Gassmann at Studio noisyneighbours, Uesslingen, Switzerland
Produced by Pedro Carneiro and Fritz Hauser | Executive production by Pedro Costa for Trem Azul | Design by Travassos