ECM artist Arild Anderson wraps his double bass to Clive Bell’s intoxicating Asian woodwind, punctuated by Mark Wastell’s sparing percussion in their ‘Tales Of Hackney’ improvisation for Confront’s Core Series. The resulting 50 minute work, in 9 parts, was extracted from a 10 hour recording session in the titular East London district, late summer 2017. It was edited, mixed and mastered by Rupert Clervaux with Mark Wastell, who also handled production. From the original session, they divine a series of hard-to-define scenarios as enchanting and heady as a dusky stroll thru Hackney, reflecting a synaesthetic conflux of phosphorescent light and drifting smells, flowing like its mosaic of multi-purpose dwellings riddled and teeming with life, occasionally implying a noirish, even voyeuristic stealth in its more haunted, furtive moments, while others connote a spangled wooziness, and yet more absorb and speak to an idea of London as a humid melting pot, inarguably linked to the Far East as much as downtown NYC, but solipsistically revolving its own dream. (Boomkat)

Arild Andersen : double bass / electronics
Clive Bell : khene (thai mouth organ) / shakuhachi / pi saw (thai flute) / shinobue
Mark Wastell : percussion / shruti box