As the genre loosely defined as "electro-acoustic improvisation" entered the 21st century, it attracted a large number of younger musicians, many of whom were not wedded to the notion of the music as being ultra-abstract or, indeed, of the necessity of real-time improvisation as the final product. Musicians in their twenties, having grown up in a world of instantaneous access to all sorts of music (being deluged with it, in fact), were also comfortable with the idea of post-production, of being able to improvise on the mixing board as well as on the performance stage. Too Beautiful to Burn, a fine, sensuous recording from the youthful duo of Martin Siewert and Martin Brandlmayr, is an excellent example of this trend. Both musicians are as likely to engage in "traditional" sound creation on their instruments as to plumb their nether regions. Although the improvisations have an open-endedness and expansiveness to them, Siewert's tendency toward tonal strummings (à la Burkhard Stangl) and Brandlmayr's extraordinarily deft creation of precision rhythmic commentary allows the listener varying avenues of focus. This makes for an enticingly slippery feeling to the set, as one can simultaneously hear clarity and vagueness, an approach that insists on keeping the listener on his toes. Just as you're being seduced by a mellifluous vibraphone passage (and how often do you hear vibes in free improv settings these days?) you're subtly jolted into a parallel world of buzzes and clicks where your seemingly sturdy foothold abruptly dissolves. This juxtapositioning of the lush and the severe is one of the core aspects of the disc, something it has in common with an earlier Erstwhile release, Wrapped Islands by Polwechsel and Christian Fennesz. Too Beautiful to Burn expands on that album, getting slightly more overt with rhythms (only slightly, though) and enlarging the tonal palette to include tangential references to other contemporary music that may have slipped under the radar of their somewhat older comrades. How much of what you hear was created live and how much summoned up in post-production is impossible to determine and, in the end, becomes a meaningless inquiry. More than anything, it's a lovely testament to the conceptions of its two youthful creators and stands as a very strong document of the continued vitality of the genre, conscious of its time and proceeding forward. Highly recommended. ~ Brian Olewnick, Rovi

1		Form
2		Source
3		Is This Love?
4		Axis
5		Hold