Attempts to fuse electronic music with alien genres usually go wrong when one of the supposed partners is allowed to contribute little more than a few musical gimmicks, and no real union takes place at all. A major exception to the rule is Duo by Bugge Wesseltoft and Henrik Schwarz. The album is greater than the sum of ambitious piano jazz and visionary house-not-house. That is partly because both the Norwegian jazz pianist and the German house producer possess the ability to look beyond the edges of their respective musical plates.
On Duo, first released in 2011, there is never any sense that one of them is simply doing his thing while the other is allowed to add a few ornamental touches, even if in each piece it is immediately clear who is taking the lead. With Wesseltoft and Schwarz, melody and experiment are no contradiction, and across the eight live-improvised pieces everything comes together beautifully. The bass drum is largely notable by its absence; only on the reinterpretation of Schwarz’s deep house classic »Leave My Head Alone Brain« do the beats rise just above the threshold of perception.
Duo
