First meeting of two incredible talents - Tyshawn Sorey on drums and Pat Thomas on piano. Recorded live back in 2023, we’ve sat on this for an inexcusably long time, and yet the music is as just fresh and explosive as we remember it in the room.

Just a few hours prior to the duo, Tyshawn Sorey had given a deeply meditative solo piano performance in total darkness, windows boarded up and the piano in the centre of the room, Sorey directly facing the audience as he played for almost two hours. A reflective mood set into the room, and the prospect of him being replaced on the keyboard felt a bit off. “When I’d heard he was doing a solo piano set first I thought, well, that’s it,” laughs Pat Thomas. “I’m really going to have to play”.

It doesn’t take long for the intensity to rise. A run of the right hand on the keys gives a warning, like the first few drops of rain before a thunderstorm. As Thomas’ left hand joins to plumb the bass notes, Sorey calls his metallics into play, whipping up the air around them before the humidity in the room breaks and the duo drop into momentary silence. Thomas reaches into the body of the piano - sounding some of the familiar language of Elephant Clock of Al Jazari before dropping some of those immense key clusters we’ve grown to know so well through his work in [Ahmed] and stacking them up into dense, rotating rhythms. Sorey mixes light brush work with aeolian tones, at some points striking just the air to meet Thomas’ palm muted rhythms. Midway through the set the two players are joined in percussive pursuits, Thomas’ string slides totally enmeshed with Sorey’s clinical snare work. When Thomas lifts off into more celestial territory as the set builds, Sorey marshals his shuddering field drum towards one extraordinarily clean clasp of the hi-hat - a sort of musical gasp which the crowd can’t help responding to.

The pair are wildly dynamic, beautifully precise and in possession of innumerable talents. As Sorey’s mallet rush crescendos and fades, Thomas adds two single bass notes, as if to wryly say, ‘Ta-da!” You have to laugh - it’s ridiculously good stuff from two of the best at the peak of their powers.

Recorded live at Cafe OTO by Billy Steiger on Saturday 18th November, 2023. Mixed by James Dunn. Mastered by Giuseppe Ielesi. Artwork by Norman Wilcox-Geissen. Layout by Maja Larrson.