Group Listening

Meditative heavy hitters Group Listening deliver a haunting, reflective and lovingly considered selection box of musical reworkings alongside their own compositions. Paul Jones's piano rolls through tracks hypnotically while Stephen Black's clarinet takes the melodies and weaves in and out rather than sitting across the top.

Featuring reimagined tracks by the likes of Arthur Russell, Brian Eno and Robert Wyatt, the two musicians were doing what all music fans do: comparing favourite tracks, turning each piece over for new meaning and developing a musical understanding of each other in the process.

As a result the overall tone is thought provoking and engagingly unique, retaining an air of abstraction that permits the mind to wander, wonder and dream. The pieces are presented as points of stimulus, ports from which to embark on a journey towards other musical landscapes. The pair are constantly seeking to subvert the minimalism of their sonic palette, creating a subtle but constant tension that every now and then catalyses the music to somewhere unexpected.