Renowned Japanese electric guitar master Sugimoto (best known for 1990s improv albums like Opposite as well as recordings on his own Slub Music label and with the Sugimoto Guitar Quartet) here teams up with his younger, acoustic counterpart Masubuchi for a series of musical dialogues recorded during engagements at two intimate Tokyo free music/improvisation venues, Permian and OTOOTO.

The result is a kind of riff-free abstract spacey blues, consisting of seemingly random drones, plucks, dings, drops, clangs and so on. The five lovingly-recorded pieces here are all open-ended and are about texture, tone, contrasts, space and what isn't played as much as what is. Masubuchi is particularly impressive and has a good understanding of how Sugimoto's musical mind and odd tunings work: the sparkling to-and-fro of ‘At OTOOTO II' is rather graceful, while on ‘At Permian I' and ‘At Permian II' the twin guitars glisten like super-sharp diamonds in an inky black space. Sugimoto is a cellist as well as a guitar player and on the closing ‘At OTOOTO III' he wields his axe like the big bowed instrument, generating rich, almost resinous tones while Masubuchi picks out harmonics on his acoustic to perfectly punctuate the base texture.