***1/2 Rick Rizzo and Tara Key

DARK EDSON TIGER

(Thrill Jockey)

Pure musical communication, sparked not by a song but by an emotional or even spiritual connection between players, is rare and beautiful. And that's what Eleventh Dream Day guitarist Rick Rizzo and Antietam six-stringer Tara Key achieve on the eight moody instrumentals here. The build-to-climax-and-release flow of the recording begins with acoustic guitars, limns the Eno school of head music with the aptly named "Farfisa Drone," and combines machine-like electric-guitar textures with dark piano chords until the freight-train rocker "Low Post Movement in D" reaches a flash-and-roar peak with Rizzo's standard Neil Young-stained leads ripping through. Then it's back to the salt mines, or the oil wells, or some other source of industrial inspiration, for "Chasing Tails." Rizzo and Key ramp down by blowing a hot wind of feedback through a ringing spider's web of a melody in "Duo," then roar once more on the closing "Missive," which sounds at times like the thrash and crunch of a pair of over-amplified dinosaurs breeding. It's astonishing that most of Dark Edson Tiger was done by exchanging tapes in the mail -- each player adding a just-right blend of inspiration and improvisation to the others' musical missives.

-- Ted Drozdowski