Peter Knight and Dung Nguyen are members of Way Out West, the cross-cultural jazz ensemble, not the UK Trance outfit. This would be obvious from the opening moments of Residual, itself a cross-cultural investigation into electro-acoustic timbres, improvisation and digital processing. At the core of their work is Knight’s trumpet and Nguyen’ dan tranh and dan bau, traditional Vietnamese string instruments, which unadorned would create an original and engaging pairing, particularly given Knight and Nguyen’s minimalist improvisational approach. The inclusion of electronics, mostly in the form of downcast gloomy pads, plentiful reverb and tinkered loops, both adds and subtracts from this basis.
Pieces vary from the austere and moody ambiance of the title track, sparse string plucks over a velvety low end drone over which Knight’s trumpet pleads like Arve Henriksen, to the raw bluesy shambles of ‘Travelling’, where Nguyen’s off-key twang recalls an Eastern Marc Ribot against the splash of waddling duck feet, gusts of steam and echoed jumble. Both these examples are convincing, the former like the finest of ECM fusion releases, the latter suitable for World Circuit. ‘Phase Pedal’ aims somewhere halfway, a looped chunk of strings repeated over feedback reminiscent of Spacemen 3’s ‘How Does it Feel’. In ‘Minky Star’ meanwhile Nguyen and Knight seem lost, drowned by echo and effects, overwhelmed by their machines. This is an isolated case however, and I imagine their live performances would bring out their best.
Joshua Meggitt
