Arnold Dreyblatt, Paul Panhuysen

LP, gatefold with archival photographs and liner notes by René van Peer. A concert recording made at Het Apollohuis in December 1987, and the first release to document what Arnold Dreyblatt and Paul Panhuysen actually did as Duo Geloso across their European concerts of 1987 and 1988.

Panhuysen founded Het Apollohuis in Eindhoven in 1980 and ran it for twenty years. It was one of the very few spaces in Europe built around sound installation and sound sculpture rather than around concerts, and Dreyblatt visited often. The two shared an interest in numerical relationships and in the harmonics available on a string, and came at them from opposite directions: Dreyblatt austere and compositional, Panhuysen spontaneous. Van Peer's notes make that the point of the record, and it is where the energy comes from.

Six pieces, each with its own instrumentation. Razorburg uses electric guitar and bass tuned by Dreyblatt and played with E-Bows and with Panhuysen's motorised plectrums, moving through a long series of held notes under an insistent tremolo. Duo for Guitars takes the same pair and lets the mechanical attacks dissolve into a harmonic wash, close to the machine guitar work of Remko Scha, another Apollohuis figure and, with Panhuysen, a founder of the Maciunas Ensemble in 1968. On Love Call, Panhuysen's distant warbled voice arrives over the strings.

Then Synsonic Batterie, which opens with Panhuysen alone on a Synsonics Drum, a simple drum synthesiser made by the toy manufacturer Mattel, before Dreyblatt joins with the percussive natural harmonics on pedal steel guitar that are his signature. When Panhuysen adds a bird whistle, the piece becomes the clearest statement of what this duo was: extremely close listening kept up with a straight face over something faintly ridiculous.