Listening to certain stretches of the guitar duo record The Coincidence Masters, you’d be hard pressed to identify any of the sounds blaring out of your speakers as actually being produced by the stringed instrument. In fact, Eyal Maoz and Eugene Chadbourne open their first collaboration with the absolutely wacky and fittingly named ‘Words Are Not Intended’. Here, a barrage of digital chirrups and sharp tones shatter and ricochet dangerously about the stereo picture, evoking an impromptu meeting between out-there synthesists like Daniel Menche, Ryoji Ikeda, and Thomas Dimuzio. Not before long, though, the slushing, squiggly, and decidedly comical lines take on a more concrete shape, forming a poignant harmony on ‘Two Guitarists’, only to again escape the asylum’s walls.
Recorded in a single, unamped session during Chadbourne’s visit to NYC in 2022, the music presented on the album is improvisation beyond the free – extemporaneous and distilled to its rawest core. Having never played before together and therefore devoid of any pre established idioms, the two guitarists are in full deep listening and responding mode here, alternately strutting down common paths hand in hand and clashing head to head, engaging in cartoonish dialogue (‘Improvisation Enthusiasm’), and descending into wild but somehow rhythmic abstractions (‘On-The-Spot’).
Chadbourne’s inventiveness, technical skill, and sense of whimsy are on full display here, reminding us once again of all the things that place him in the pantheon of avant rock/free jazz/free improvisation guitarists, among the likes of Derek Bailey, Fred Frith, and Henry Kaiser. He also seems to push Maoz well beyond the electrifying jazz fusion that he has been unleashing with his group Edom or the fluid, Bill Frisell-evoking licks that he contributed to John Zorn’s Abraxas ensemble. Effect pedals make his guitar gurgle, scream, and buzz like hallucinated foley from a particularly rough fever dream. Meanwhile, Chadbourne’s extended techniques are fully analogue, based on the use of hands and sticks, but appear no less deranged, bending his guitar lines backwards, oscillating, and growling.
The two longest pieces ‘Unexpected, Also For Us’ (it is) and ‘Naming Comforts People’ (it does) both stand out, at times digging deep into proper blues riffing, at others just letting loose in disorienting, esoteric revelry. While all track titles make fun of even trying to read meaning into them (‘And Now, All Is Left Is The Titles Search’, ‘The Last Track’), there is a sense of narrative – of exposition, climax, and resolution – in these two cuts in particular that can be reinterpreted ad infinitum, discovering a new mood or branch with each listen. Fully improvised, stream of consciousness music is rarely as gripping and amusing as what can be heard on The Coincidence Masters.
