Snippets of scuzzy dialogue from Jessica Constable and Philippe Gelda’s hazy hisses, microphonic dust and falling, declamatory rhythms twine and develop richly immersive improvised sound pieces. The two have been collaborating since 1991 and it shows, as the album reveals an astounding display of improvised brinkmanship, teetering on total collapse but somehow staying its own unpredictable course.
Pieces are generally collage-like in their sharp, beguiling juxtapositions of tone and atmosphere, the sixteen tracks achieving a very particular, sustained mood – in part intuitive, searching and detached, in part flanked with distress.
“Bitter” begins with gentle insistence: an increasingly complex cluster of tonal fluctuations that continue and further the sinister mood to “Cailou Tremblant”, a sudden intervention stuttering organ stabs and jittery percussion gliding around a spontaneous melody. Constable’s raspy, full-bodied voice often glides in as if from another world. She sounds altogether otherworldly on “Major Changes”, all sparsely deployed percussion, organ and electronic drones that build into an insistent, trancelike piece of chanted repetition.
From these microscopically and metaphysically amplified pieces, the two shift with noticeable poise to more ferocious and unforgiving moments howling electronic noise and barked vocals, and then to elegant, star-blasted songs – “Overflow” – of a dreamlike detachment and a cosmic sense of vastness. From start to finish, The Vine and Vein Collection is a bold summation of the duo at their intense best.
