Mats Erlandsson & Maria Horn - Celestial Shores

The respective Mats Elandsson and Maria Horn tracks featured on the most recent edition to the XKatedral Anthology Series were my personal highlights, which makes it a particular treat to have them combine for this new collaboration for B.A.A.D.M. It's a pairing that actually stems back to a 2021 performance where the duo live soundtracked part of Warhol's Nico/Nico Crying film, though the recordings here were actually made at the start of last year, albeit following the same live performance remit. Two artists in a room playing live, just as they would have been had they recorded back when the film was made. It's no novelty, instead accentuating the intersection of improvised and compositional work, highly considered music made in response to and in harmony with another. The first side is an exercise in evocative minimalism built from stark zither and field recordings, not especially typical of the XKatedral world with which they're both so closely tied, gesturing only very slightly towards the more elemental expressions that comprise the second side. It's on that second side where they more consciously engage their previously explored interests in drone aesthetics, Berlin School electronics underpinning much heavier incorporation of zither and metallic percussion, a far denser flowering of the ideas explored on the A, what you might consider a neat conceptual reflection of the duality of Warhol's title.