If you have any time for tense, startling improvisation, Both Will Escape (Family Vineyard) is 2016’s record to beat. Recorded in spring 2015, it captures the thrill of discovery as guitarist Tashi Dorji and drummer Tyler Damon play together in a studio for the first time—and for just the third time in any setting. Their sound is not without precedent: its jagged edges and unpredictable turns recall the drums-and-guitar duo of Han Bennink and Derek Bailey, and Dorji and Damon occasionally achieve a sandblasting intensity on par with that of Rudolph Grey’s Blue Humans. But if you’ve only heard Dorji’s mostly acoustic solo LPs, with their clarity and deft use of empty space, his fluent manipulation of feedback, loops, and volume will come as a revelation.
Dorji’s contact with punk taught him the rudiments of DIY music production, but he didn’t discover what kind of music he wanted to play for another five years. That’s when he happened upon a concert by a local free-improv duo, which in turn led him to plunge into the recorded history of improv and free jazz via file-sharing websites. He became part of that community, playing shows at venues such as the now-defunct Asheville storefront Apothecary and self-releasing his music on cassette—his first label project, a self-titled LP on Hermit Hut Records, came out in 2014.
Damon and Dorji first played together in spring 2015, and they’ve released some of their earliest encounters on the tape Live at the Spot +1 (Astral Spirits) and on Both Will Escape. They’ve toured twice already in 2016, first in a trio with Danish saxophonist Mette Rasmussen and then with Asheville-based drummer Tom Nguyen, who has his own project with Dorji called Manas. The Dorji-Damon-Nguyen trio played in Chicago in July as part of the Astral Spirits Festival, but Dorji and Damon have yet to play here as a duo—this Friday’s concert at Elastic is their first visit. Local sound artist Jen Hill and electric jazz quintet Test Flight open.
