Eyal Maoz and Eugene Chadbourne — The Coincidence Masters

Eyal Maoz and Eugene Chadbourne's The Coincidence Masters is a whimsical and absurd collection of free improvisations by two guitar players, who are using their instruments for anything but their conventional sounds.  The album is fifty-two minutes long, divided across eleven tracks of a variety of lengths.

String noise and percussive scrapes ran through octave pedals comprise most of the opener, "Words Are Not Intended".  The two musicians' instruments are largely panned left/right, so it's easy to hear who comes up with what, and how they are interrelating to each other.  Through this track's title and others, they make a sort of meta-commentary on their own style, explaining it to the listener through names like "Improvisation Enthusiasm", "On-the-spot" and "Naming Comforts People".

The second piece "Two Guitarists" relaxes a bit, with a couple of semi-melodic phrase fragments, and a sort of dubby surf feeling about it.  The following "Improvisation Enthusiasm" is a pointillistic exercise in dissonance, ending in a flurry of muted strums and slide.

The guitar playing is undistorted, sounding most acoustic aside from the pitch processing that appears now again.  There is no clear evidence of amplifiers.  This pairing of acoustic guitar with effects is a curious choice, though it loses its novelty, as there isn't much variation in the timbres used on the album.  80% of the album is dry acoustic guitars, and the remaining fraction has some octave pedal work.

Overall, the sense of humour and irony is not enough to avoid the sense that this recording is largely unfocused, with nowhere in particular in mind to go.  The absurd charm remains intact for the first few pieces, but seems to dissipate as we get into the later parts of the album, with 10+ minute tracks like "Unexpected, Also For Us".

I get the impression these two musicians enjoy spending time together, and very much enjoyed making this recording, and I admire their sincere love for the act of improvisation.  However, it is a piece that emerged from some lazy afternoon, in which urgency was far away, and the passage of time was quite slow indeed, and I'm often too mentally hurried to relax into something as vaporous as this.  For one reason or another, by the latter half of the recording, I'm longing for some structure and clear direction.  There are a couple blues and jazz licks to be heard, but no clear moments of synergy.

If you consider yourself cynical about free jazz and improvisation, this recording will likely not change your mind, as it certainly has a meandering, noodling quality, and was made casually, with no theme in mind.  However, you could say that within the sort of playful attitude exhibited by these musicians, there is a pure child-like joy in the act of creation and listening.  It's difficult really engage with the contents of this disk, but I admire the energy behind its creation.