The musical avant garde is a broad spectrum, encompassing the most extremely austere minimalism and the most jam-packed maximalist statements, the most rigidly structured formalism and the most chaotic improvisation, sounds drawn from nature and generated by man. It's so broad as to render the very term avant garde meaningless as a descriptor, and yet we still know it when we hear it. Yannis Kyriakides and Andy Moor come from different zones of that spectrum, Kyriakides the formal world of electronic composition and Moor the wild world of art punk (with the Ex) and large ensemble free jazz (Corkestra), but their basic desire to color outside the lines is fraternal enough that the two have not only founded the Unsounds label together, they've also recorded an album together for their imprint.
The setup is simple: Kyriakides does live programming and sound manipulation while Moor plays guitar and fiddles with a radio. The effect is something approaching minimalism, but too active to fully qualify-- it's actually quite similar the Gilbert/Lewis Wire side project Dome, and anyone who enjoyed that duo's third and fourth albums in particular is quite likely to enjoy this as well. Ex fans looking for an extracurricular fix might find themselves as puzzled as many Wire fans were after hearing Dome. But Moor's trademark six-ton razor-blade attack never makes itself known here-- instead he uses the instrument percussively or stretches out string noise to blend with Kyriakides' static-electric buzzes, twitters and crunches.
The guitar sounds as if it's being torn asunder on "Eel", a track that stretches and distorts the sound of knocking on the strings into a miniature replica of a black hole. On the other side of that singularity, "Little Bittern" is the sound of guitar leaking through a pinhole in the roof, dropping a particle at a time amid trebly buzzing and electronic sloshing noises. While some tracks are haunting, a few are too shapeless to do much harm, and tracks like "Possible Wheels"-- which drags fumbling percussive sounds out over four-and-a half-minutes-- are the most amoebic. It's these tracks that draw the album a bit past its welcome, but they're very little harm done overall.
The reward for making it past "The Eye on Its Side" is great, however: the 10-minute closer "Nocturnal" is a haunting, suspenseful piece of music built around low-level string noise and a steadily tolling bass tone that sounds like the sort of timbre Harry Partch might have dreamed up on one of his oddball marimbas. It's a stunning conclusion that makes for the album's most affecting (the effect, in this case, being a profound fear of going into dark rooms) moment. Red v Green is a relentlessly abstract affair, but it still manages to get inside you more than many similar records, and it's a fascinating meeting point for two very different constituents of the modern avant garde.
