Skeleton Drafts is the first recorded work by accordionist Jonas Kocher who has regularly collaborated with the likes of Michel Doneda, d’incise, Alfredo Costa Monteiro and many others, and saxophonist Ilan Manouach who is one half of the noise/improv unit Balinese Beast and has also teamed up on many occasions with Agustí Fernández and Ivo Sans. Throughout the length of three tracks the two musicians propose a solid vocabulary of sounds while heavily relying on their own distinctive personal glossary – which is however not necessarily used for the needs of a certain storytelling: Manouach’s short and swiftly repeated phrases, rigorous blows and plucking sounds revolve around static tones, tonal variations and incisive but subtle periodic moves by Kocher. Mediated by irregular passages of silence and idiosyncratic acoustics of the recording studio, the sounds recurrently convene in corresponding gestures even though they spring from unique trajectories. These variations in style, originating from a plexus of phonemes, allow some exceptional qualities to emanate from the recording, which ultimately resembles an evaluation of elastic collision of different manners and approaches, carefully carried out in order to present a truly fine aesthetic.
