Rosenau & Sanborn: Two

Album review of the second ambient electro-acoustic jam by this supreme duo

Rosenau & Sanborn

Two

Psychic Hotline

This is an aptly named second album by a duo (twice over). Chris Rosenau (Volcano Choir) is an experimental guitarist — deft across both acoustic and electric — and Nick Sanborn (Sylvan Esso) is a producer/knob-twiddler and multi-instrumentalist.

For this album they connected their instruments — where possible — so guitar lines all but melt into synth pieces, and dance around and within the hypnotic spots of drum machine.

This one is all about deep connection — an electro-acoustic ambient jam that is as much ‘dialogue’ between the instruments as it is the players making the noises. The pair first worked together under this moniker of surnames to create 2019’s Bluebird; where that album was all spontaneity and jam, this new record feels like a careful plotting — a recapturing of the magic, sure, but also a recalibration. As much about the sonics, and capturing of the sound as the actual sounds made.

I’m transported back to Gastr del Sol (David Grubbs and Jim O’Rourke) and some of the laptop/guitar music Grubbs made on his own. But also the charming wee mini-album EP that Tiny Ruins and Hamish Kilgour created (Hurtling Through, 2015).

There’s a special magic when two instrumentalists face off in a studio and co-compose on the spot. And Two is a lovely little 31-minute, six-track dialogue.

Opener, Ghost Sub starts with glitches galore, before a lovely acoustic guitar motif feels almost like Buckethead at his most contemplative (think Colma, specifically Watching The Boats With My Dad).

In fact it’s funny to reference the Hamish Kilgour/Tiny Ruins EP, because some of the playing here, specifically on Ghost Sub in particular, feels a bit like David Kilgour’s 2019 low-key masterpiece, Bobbie’s a girl:

On Harm, Roseanau doubles against himself with chiming guitar motifs, as Sanborn sits in the space beneath the fretted octave taps — Sanborn eventually sets up a bed for the guitar to sprawl across. Beautiful stuff.

For Deltas, the guitar playing is almost Pink Moon-like (think Horn or the more hypnotic, contemplative Drake) with little tiny electronic shimmers and bleeps and bloops beneath.

On Kay, there’s a great little guitar lick set against a single note piano, it reminds me of early 00s Kings of Convenience or The Album Leaf.

Walrus gets more processed and shiny/shimmery, with the guitar compressed through a harmoniser, cut up and fed back into the tune almost against itself. This is where Sanborn works his production magic. And the rhythm bursts forward into the tune from its initial background position, to take over — but only ever in the right way.

The closing title track takes us on an eight minute journey from acoustic tranquility through trippy voices (think Dirty Projectors).

This is a little headphone masterpiece of an album; the sort of soundtrack for the house you leave on and interact with as you come and go, or take with you on your walk around the world; everything sounding better when slightly blunted beneath this.