Do you tie yourself up in knots about whether an album has a larger or smaller amount of improvisation on it? I don’t. It’s not the defining factor for me listening to Yusuf Ahmed & Harry Christelis Live at Mu.
The language is more important. And that twist of musical vocabulary and stylistic direction is appealing here. If I didn’t know I wouldn’t have guessed that this music was all improvised because it has an expansive, logical, composed sense to it.
The duo of drummer Yusuf Ahmed and guitarist Harry Christelis must have been in an inspired frame of mind on this occasion playing a restaurant/wine bar venue named after a Don Cherry album in London in July 2023.
Droney, loose, glacial at times, very mindful – it has a prog, spacious, ambient intensity and while soundscapey isn’t at all as dreary and flakey as such sounds often disappointingly prove to be.
The second and the fourth pieces are very long but at no times do the pieces overstay their welcome or drift into the netherworld of under conversation fluff.
Live at Mu seems more like one long piece chopped into four parts.
You might say that’s because all the pieces are similar. And you would have a point but that doesn’t matter. It’s like listening to a story that never really has an ending and the nature of the recording is questing and exploratory looping in and out of the distant coves and quiet inlets that the duo are intent on inhabiting.
To go back to where I began it’s all in the unknowing – that sense of spontaneous creation allows for that and as a listener I was more than happy to go along for the ride and see where the duo takes me with these dialogues. It really casts a powerful spell. The din of audience sound fed into the mix is also organically absorbed and helps mean nothing here is clinical or too stark.
