Since 1975, Exiles, the magical virtuoso improvisational duo of Jay Zelenka and Greg Mills, have released countless recordings of their spontaneous compositional development and their exploration of sound and the world's various musical architectures and instruments. None of them, however, comes close to touching the mysterious, unabashedly beautiful
Stranded in Paradise. Utilizing everything from a piano and alto saxophone to bowed gongs, kalimba, wood and bamboo flutes, temple bowl gongs, prepared piano, and celeste, the intimate musical language forged by this pair may be impenetrable in terms of its structural considerations, but it is welcoming and affirming in its emotional transference from musician and instrument to listener. Recorded in late 1989 in St. Louis, MO, the nine selections here are exercises in the investigation of harmony, mode, interval, and the various ways in which they can be combined, from nearly song forms to complete free improvisation -- often within a few measures of one another. From the lyrical chromatic configuration of "Devotion," listeners hear the sounds of the forest meet with the scalar archetypes of Western music as they engage with the unknown, the infinite, in a series of melodic and rhythmic melodies created on the kalimba. The celeste and bowed gongs act as a percussion choir, offering the African thumb piano a space -- first one, then two others making it a trio of kalimbas -- for its own creation of interstitial harmonic dialogue. On "Sonaire: Subterranean Forest," the piano touches wood flutes until bells and other gongs become a part of the language of this unknown terrain -- musically and linguistically -- until an acceptable language emerges as a weave of the three primary elements. On "New World Raga," a series of intervals with chromatic statements emanating from augmented, minor sixths on the piano and kalimba entwine the alto and become an extension of harmony by repeating the tail end of one phrase as the beginning of another, offering a blend of Indian classical music and African rhythm with Western scale improvisation on the piano in the center. In all, Exiles provide a compelling listening experience, full of a joy and reverence for sonic history and evolution that is seldom experienced on a free improv recording. ~ Thom Jurek