Loren Connors & Alan Licht - The Blue Hour

Mesmerising live performance from the great Loren Connors and Alan Licht recorded at Cafe OTO last year as the duo celebrated 30 years of collaboration. When these two sit in the company of one another, you can be sure of significant results (see the recently issued At The Top of the Stairs LP for more on that matter), though The Blue Hour does feel particularly special given it plays witness to a rare Connors appearance on piano and mostly only Licht on guitar until parts of the record's second side. I don't suppose I'm alone in this, but I don't principally think of Connors as a piano man - more fool me. He takes to it here with the same dark night of the soul elan with which he plays guitar, that trademark sense of the melancholy-divine radiating from each droning key, sound as shade and colour. Side one is heavy and storm-cloud ominous, building to a swirling cacophony that echoes the cadences of other Connors-Licht unions, though it's the side two that really connects for me, a relatively lighter connection between the pair that feels more tied to dark-hued avant blues melodicism than drone and noise. As such, The Blue Hour acts as a multi-sided presentation of a unique creative pairing, the kind of rich layered and textured work that can only really be summoned after 30 years of chiseling away at an understanding.