Ian William Craig, Daniel Lentz

In a Word, the sixteenth installment of the intergenerational collaboration series FRKWYS, brings together postminimalist composer Daniel Lentz with vocalist and sound artist Ian William Craig for an album that embraces erosion and the fertility of the loam left behind. A document of shared transformation, Lentz’s elegant piano figures and Craig’s trembling tenor are wilted, warbled, and looped through manipulated tape machines in a real time composition that evokes a strange warmth and layered beauty.

"Accompanied by a soon come documentary on the pair by director Eli Welbourne, In a Word sees Craig & Lentz undo each other in brittle but sublime style that, as the label eloquently put it, “embraces erosion and the potential of its loam left behind.” It’s surely one of the subtlest charms on the long-running and illustrious roll call of the FRKWYS series, highlighting the timeless, otherworldlyy intent and transportive power of two artists who respectively emerged some 30 years apart, but patently share a sense of pathos that resonates for the ages. In nine pieces they spell out a hauntingly lived-in sound, evoking a sort of parlour music for creaky abandoned dwellings, imagining a post-dinner performance of ghosts that emerge from cracked wood panels and tatty curtains in once-splendid settings, seemingly convening around a dilapidated grand piano with chipped keys and peeling walnut wood, to play out lamenting nocturnes rendered in mildewed harmonics and fizzing dissonance, with Craig’s beautifully faltering, vulnerable vocals vacillating folkwise and classical spirits." - Boomkat