Today marks the release of a new duo album of short improvisations by myself and Cath Roberts. In early 2019 we played a cluster of duo gigs around London and it felt really nice to strip everything away to the sparseness of an alto and baritone saxophone. In April 2019 we decided to record the duo. The spontaneous, relatively short improvisations captured the spirit of the duo, with wildly ranging textures from minimalist sounds to full on wailing. It was recorded by Cath, mixed by Alex Bonney and the album artwork is by me! Although the accompanying tour wasn’t possible due to COVID, it feels good to share it with the world now.
I have worked together with Cath since 2013 in various contexts: organising live performances, tours and festivals under the banner of LUME, co-running our record label Luminous and playing together in numerous projects – most recently with UK/Swiss sextet MoonMot. The label grew out of the work we’ve done with LUME; the perfect complement to putting on live performances. Luminous’ first release was in July 2015: Live At LUME a collection of bootleg recordings from performances at a regular night we’d been running at The Long White Cloud in Hoxton. Live At LUME functioned as a fundraiser to enable us to keep going with our work. The label has also seen releases from Cath’s quintet Sloth Racket and my electronics duo Deemer, amongst other things.
DEE BYRNE 