No Man's Land Plain Cuckoo Not Mixolodian Mercy Sleep Time Over Tumble Gimcrack Serenade Separate Thoughts
notes
‘Border Patrol' was a very private musical meeting between Niko Meinhold from Berlin and Noel Taylor from London. No geographical borders were crossed during the improvisations, but both musicians seem to weave in and out of different styles of playing, at times transgressing so far into melodic territory that at one moment their music might appear to be located in 19th Century Romanticism, whilst at the next it might flirt with the Blues, before fragmenting into very recognisably 21st Century improv. Both players give themselves over to a kind of auto-suggestion where a chance chord or rhythmic pattern invokes a musical thought. This is not to say that the music is indiscriminate – there is a very strong sense of shared restraint and a common feel for the shape and pace of the pieces as they develop. Neither of them would claim to have passed over any new musical boundaries, so much as to have revelled in occupying a musical no-mans land, where borders can be crossed and re-crossed without constraint.