Preservation 
Tom Carter & Robert Horton : Monsters Of Felt (US,2005?)***'
Although I wasn’t convinced before with (from what I have heard : the early works of) the minimal drone decomposing group Charalambides and their, for me, defragmenting exploitations of some lack of visions and disciplines, while guitarist Tom Carter’s cooperation with Robert Horton seems to expand this dangerous circular turmoil territory into something already more interesting.
-To some degree Charalambides expressed very well the time’s (lack of) perspectives with a condition of non-participating with the world in real actions or communicative structures, as if in a further developed state of decomposition- ; it is especially with the last track of this new album that I was able to describe how, as a duo, they take one step further with this reality.
Instead of following the natural causes and movements fade in its own existence so that chaos is near, there is equally given in it an order, brought into that natural state of being so, and this in that degree so that it can find and form spontaneously a moment of choice or invention or creation of a harmony, a rhythm, a sound exploration, or anything, while on the other hand this opportunity in energy is not taken to a further degree of humanized structure, because such action needs to show the vulnerable condition of the performance so that this can only happen with preparation before improvisation and talent, -a risk which is not taken, maybe because one would at such a stage they might not be able to express more with it-, but instead, still interesting in how they do so, they maintain this state, in this fragile balance before a new order of creation, to evolve further in time, keeping it remaining in an organic state, something which is interesting because of the cooperative action between both musicians. The maintenance of this state so does not become invention, or real improvisation like in a jazzrock sense, but remains an energetic structure but luckily without eating itself up, and by evolving and reinventing itself and its potential conditions in time.
On the first two tracks, the drones, textures and tuning-ins are brought into life, with variations of super-minimalism sculpturing. Instead of stagnating into a more depressed state like such minimalism ought to do, the rhythms find its harmonic equations, and certain gamelan-like states are found, which are rhythmically hypnotic, and alive in its colours and pitches, finding its own course and perspective in and throughout time.
By the 4th track, other interesting freighting rhythmical tensions are performed by the guitar, with more dark tensions, and the colourful gamelan-like ideas finds its own shapes even much more than before.
There’s too much happening here to let the improvised sounds break apart in chaos. The music maintains this tension of finding a creative formation with almost nothing that becomes real, so that it remains abstract, a vibration, a tension, a moment before thought.
