Huge Tip! 200 copies limited edition - While most musicians spend years developing chemistry, Exotic Sin and Julian Sartorius achieved something close to musical telepathy in a single afternoon at BBC Broadcasting House. What started as a radio session for BBC Radio 3's Late Junction became something far more significant—a masterclass in how three minds can think as one organism when the conditions are exactly right.
In Session documents this first studio encounter between the London-based duo and the Swiss percussion wizard, winding through six distinct and interconnected paths that feel less like compositions and more like conversations between old friends. Think The Necks at their most crystalline, where Tony Buck's percussion work becomes pure texture rather than rhythm, channelled through the pristine studio atmospheres that made early ECM releases like Marion Brown's Afternoon of a Georgia Faun sound like transmissions from another dimension. Exotic Sin has been crafting their own brand of minimalist chaos since their debut Customer's Copy, building soundscapes that occupy a similar headspace to Don Cherry's most globally conscious explorations. But something different happens when Sartorius enters the picture. His tactile approach to percussion—treating drums not as timekeepers but as environmental sound sculpture—unlocks a lighter, more playful language from the duo. Where their debut felt murky and insistent, In Session breathes with crystalline air and infinite patience. The magic lies in their refusal to play it safe, creating something that channels collective consciousness without sacrificing individual voice. Anchored by piano that recalls the most introspective solo work of the jazz masters, delicate wood and metal instruments that create ripples expanding outward like stones dropped in still water, they build a fluid system of interactions that repeats and deepens without fixating.
Sartorius brings restless intelligence that transforms percussion into pure texture generation. His work traces horizons that feel more like sonic poetry than traditional drumming—each strike creating expanding sonic environments that envelope the listener rather than driving them forward. Even on the final track, "Path 6," you get the sense these three have stumbled onto something that could keep unfolding forever. Two years later, listening to these recordings feels like discovering a lost session from music's golden period of studio experimentation. The trio builds at a relaxed pace that offers space for listeners to enter their evolving sound—the kind of patient unfolding where fifteen minutes can feel like fifteen seconds, and you emerge from the other side fundamentally changed.
In Session proves that the best collaborations happen when musicians stop trying to be themselves and start channeling something larger than the sum of their parts, creating music that transcends its immediate circumstances to become something universal.
