March 2001

Joe Morris/Mat Maneri
Soul Search
AUM Fidelity

By Duck Baker

There are breath-taking moments on Soul Search when the two players find their way into a little musical world that seems utterly undiscovered, and these sublime successes seem to lift the level of the music throughout. It's not that this is a necessarily a better pairing (though it does seem a less difficult one, instrumentally), so much as perhaps a case of inspiration just flowing freely on a given day. Whatever the reason, there are times when the magic of joint discovery reminded me of the way Derek Bailey and Evan Parker used to work together.