Guitarist Andy Moor is best known for frenetic harrangues in the Ex and Dog Faced Hermans. His idiosyncratic six string scratchings get reprocessed via Kaffe Matthews computer on these recordings of improvised encounters. Matthews mutates the raw angular attack and chime of Moor's guitar into loops, drones and static buzz which Moor responds to in turn. Matthews sometimes just loops a two tone fragment, at others crushes the guitar into thin spidery high pitched digi-screech. Veering from rattling unwinding machine cog splinters through short patches of sparse plucking hum calm to loose freeform thunderous excavation textures, they stay just ahead of thrumming abstraction with some odd but simple rhythmic moves that skip merrily around complex dissonant edges, unfurling repetitive patterns, coalescing and fragmenting.

They make a fine unfettered noise and know how to effectively build and release tension. Whilst "She Is Nice" charges forth in hectic flux, "Builder Bloomsberg" opens with a repeated dipping strum over click clack loops that slowly morph into a fluctuating bipolar drone where the sound sources seem to merge. Then Moor builds an ever more discordant fractious guitar onslaught over Matthews' pulsating loops. The track climaxes with the computer ripping the strings from the guitar and strangling an unsuspecting studio engineer. So that didn't really happened but since this is a recording imagination can color the events it portrays.

Kaffe Matthews' last solo recording to reach these ears "CD Cecile", seemed to dispense with the violin that she'd previously used as a sound source, at least in any recognisable form, so it's quite good to hear her take on the guitar here. Mostly guitar remains recognisable as such, but occasionally, as on the low drone eerie ambience that concludes "Here Is Your Coat," the laptop textures seem to hold sway. This would probably be much more fun if you could see how Andy Moor's attacking the guitar as he's quite a visual performer if his days in Dog Faced Hermans are anything to go by.

Something I find a little strange about recordings of improvisation is that they often grow with repeated listenings. This might seem to contradict the essence of improvisation, which is instantaneous action and reaction, but perhaps makes sense of the point of actually releasing improv recordings in the first place. At first this CD seemed to out stay its welcome at almost the full seventy minute mark, but after a few plays seemed to be over in a flash. Maybe the machine cogs were the atonal sounds of time compacting and unravelling. Occasionally, as on the Instant Chavires gig segment of "Here Is Your Coat," it's almost like a lighter fleet footed cousin of the heavy record shop emptying storm of the FM Einheit / Caspar Brotzmann encounter preserved on 'Merry Christmas.'

If you ever wanted to hear the spikiness of the Ex in a much less anchored setting then this is something you should hear and I'd also recommend that fans of Sonic Youth's more wayward freakout tendencies check this out.