Vital Weekly (NL)

Stephen Vitiello released before on 12k, an excellent collaboration with Machinefabriek and here he does one with Molly Berg, of whom we learn “is a songwriter and multi-instrumentalist who has appeared on recordings by Cracker and Jason Molina” – entirely my mistake that this doesn’t mean much to me I guess. Together they played some music for Brazilian video artist Eder Santos, but it turned out they had so much material that they edited to some more “songs” and “variations” out of it. Berg plays clarinet, voice, whistling, field recordings and such like and Vitiello returns to playing the guitar here, after a six years hiatus. Quite intimate music going on here, but also a bit single minded. The flageletto guitar playing is a thing you can do only so often on a record and not an entire record I guess. I’d say again later night atmospheric music like Pillowdiver, but I’d play that one first and then this one, as Vitiello & Berg have a some what softer pace in them. Both CDs are nice, but not as spectacular. (FdW)