Minimalism means different things to different people, and Daniel O’Sullivan and Richard Youngs have so far provided at least two interpretations of how minimal music might sound. After their joint debut Twelve of Hearts indulged in spartan outsider synth-pop, Persian Rug offers two side-long instrumental pieces, with the Grumbling Fur member on piano and the hyper-prolific DIY noisenik on zither. As implied by the album title, this unlikely duo weaves subtle rhythms together like threads and tells its story by way of tone colour.
In the first piece, Youngs accompanies O’Sullivan by rapidly and almost aggressively strumming a single chord for long stretches of time, while the latter matches this intensity with cascading piano motifs built from only a few notes. It sounds as if O’Sullivan’s frequent collaborator Charlemagne Palestine had teamed up with Lubomyr Melnyk – a wonderfully chaotic trip full of subtle changes with not-so-subtle consequences. On the flipside, Youngs’ playing becomes more rhythmically diverse and arpeggio-rich, while his partner lets the notes drift through space, in the manner of The Necks’ Chris Abrahams.
Like the best minimal music, Persian Rug is several things at once: cathartic, introspective, overwhelming, intimate and ecstatic.
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