Repetition is often at its most effective when it ceases to be repetitive. That is, repetition can, having lulled the listener into a state of routinely fulfilled expectations, shift the listening experience without immediately divulging that the routine has, in fact, been dispensed with. At both a micro and macro level, this is precisely what Two, a recent collaboration between Martin Lukanov and Mytrip, has accomplished. The first track opens with piano phrases so firmly enacted and widely spaced that you can read the waveform (over at soundcloud.com) like a musical score. In time, though, those pulses are morphed into something undulating and droning. Yet the ear is so attuned to stasis that the move is less of a rupture than this description might suggest. The opening track on Two accomplishes this very feat, but so too does it set the mode for the album as a whole. At times, as in track four, the piano returns, but as sublimated chords whose constituent elements are pulled like taffy, twisted this way and that until they become almost unrecognizable.
More on the musicians, who are based in Bulgaria, at soundcloud.com/mytrip and pftidk.com. More details at the releasing netlabel, abandonmentlabel.blogspot.com, and file-hosting service, archive.org.