Big Gamble by Andi Jackson & David McLean

Although Jackson and McLean spent many of their formative years playing in an array of dubious named and increasingly outsider rock groups, ‘Big Gamble’ is the first time they have ever made music purely as a duo. In the intervening years since their last band activities together.

Jackson founded Thraa and began to focus on prepared guitar experiments in a series of aurally challenging and investigative solo records issued on his own Fr33zehead imprint.

McLean has continued to make mostly improvised music with a cinematic aura, releasing the critically acclaimed ‘Embassy Nocturnes’ with his crime-jazz group Aging, performing regularly with his wife, award winning poet Lauren Bolger, and most recently with Fire Nearby, an open-ended love letter to early post-rock influences shared with bandmate David Birchall, one of the UK improvised music scene’s most prolific and groundbreaking guitarists.

Drawing on the variety of their respective practice, Jackson and McLean met in the summer 2024 to record 6 pieces that veers from all out free-jazz mayhem to disquieting acoustic phenomena. The core of the record is built around three long prepared guitar and saxophone duos that draw on a shared love on the sparring matches between Peter Brotzmann & Keiji Haino, Jim O’Rourke & Akira Sakata and Masayuki Takayanagi & Karou Abe. ‘Moontide’s essence is Jackson’s carving and bowed detuned guitar, with McLean torching his Alto Saxophone with multiphonics, skronks and soul alighting, minor key flight that wouldn’t sound out of place on an ECM record. ‘Voice In The Wind’ is the most major key and sun bathed, Jackson hammering his guitar like a dulcimer and McLean homages Pharaoh Sanders, with the threat of total chaotic collapse always visible on the horizon.

The title track is probably the most obtuse and jarring piece on record, with more bowed guitar and alto sax clamouring to establish sure footing. As a field recording of pouring water appears which begins to drown the duos playing, McLean attempts to keep his head above surface with more gutter noir melodic refrains as Jackson's scything, down-tuned guitar pulls the ankle back into the water. For the rest of the record, Jackson and McLean mirror each other’s instrumentation, with them both switching to Melodica on ‘Nightfall 1 & 2’ to create a pair of ghostly mood pieces to reset the ears. Album closer ‘Narrow Margin’ goes further, boiling the duos essence down to a pair of acoustic guitars. With a knowing nod to the ‘just intonation’ work of Taku Sugimoto, McLean and Jackson trade spacious, ringing harmonics before the a gorgeous balm of bowed guitar floods the sparse landscape in a glowing, winter light.

Fr33zehead is a U.K based independent label / arts collective

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