Forgetting You Is Like Breathing Water - Forgetting You Is Like Breathing Water (2024) [Hi-Res]

Playing like a collaboration between Arve Henriksen and Loren Mazzacane Connors, Will Evans and Theo Trump's debut is a whip-smart fusion of powdery ambience, low-key Americana and tempered free jazz.

Still in their early 20s, trumpeter Evans and multi-instrumentalist/producer Trump sound as if they've been honing their skills for decades. The duo have known each other for some time - they grew up together in Virginia, and share an interest in everything from Gastr del Sol and Bill Orcutt to Coltrane and Pharoah Sanders, and this closeness makes their first album sound way more effortless than it should. Evans' muted trumpet sits so comfortably above Trump's plaintive riffs and wooly pads on 'Flesh of Lost Summers' that it's hard to separate the elements, and on 'Partings', they sound as if they're trading words as they go back and forth with deep, memorable phrases.

And although these soft-focus moments show the duo's rare candor, it's on their more experimental tracks that Trump and Evans show their real promise. 'The Light at the End' is a gristly lowercase noise workout, with Trump scraping at his strings and Evans coaxing hoarse wails from his trumpet, and on the long finale 'The Mountains Are a Dream That Calls to Me', they shimmer from pastel ambience into loose-limbed, ECM-ready jazz, erupting into deafening free noise before the titles roll.

Tracklist:
1 A Happy Death
2 Flesh of Lost Summers
3 The Light at the End
4 Partings
5 A Collapse of Horses
6 The Mountains Are a Dream That Calls to Me