Cameron Deyell / Laurence Pike - Isola (Endless Recordings)

Australian duo Deyell and Pike soundtrack a pulsating world on the verge of eco-collapse with their new album Isola

Speaking to Concrete Islands in 2020, percussionist Laurence Pike talked about the extreme bush fires raging in his homeland. “There was a palpable sense of the world ending,” he said. “As a musician this couldn’t help but feed into my music.” Now consider guitarist Cameron Deyell, whose podcast series The Rowboat confronts the environmental dangers facing our waterways. Pike and Deyell have worked together before on a song cycle for acoustic guitars, drumkit, percussion and sampler. Here they revisit those elements for Isola, a project meant to be premiered before the pandemic struck.

Pike, you sense, is a drummer who’d rather take up the kazoo than be forced to play in strict 4/4. His work is about mazy volatility, restraint and invention. Deyell is similar, in the sense that he lends breathing space to his melodic lines, often echoing Ralph Towner or indeed Geir Sundstøl’s dustified conjurings. The duo cites jazz futurism as an influence on Isola, but it’s a version adapted more from the land of Kroner than Kraut. And given that Greta Thunberg is the influence for two tracks, the essence of Nordic thinking runs deep here. Isola often mirrors the no-limits Oslo scene of bands such as Lumen Drones and Exoterm, where inter-group collabs produce surprising treasures.

Opening cut “Calling” begins with Pike’s furious cymbal ticklings, plus flamenco guitar notes from Deyell. Below this lies a tense insistence from what sounds like an electrified banjo. Pike has used a synth pad allied to his drum kit before, and on “Hidden Code” he adds fuzzy explosions to the eerie guitar chords. Then on “Greta”, Pike responds variedly to a sonic setting that’s more vintage 4AD than ECM with its hazy guitar jangles.

As ever with Pike or Deyell you can float your own visions onto their soundscapes. Perhaps there’s a sense of isolation amid vastness that chimes with Deyell’s seafaring. There’s also a feeling of quiet dread invading moments of private beauty. It’s clearly an album that’s more conceptually distinct than fuzzily themed. Clues are offered in track titles such as “Thunberg” where Pike injects a ticking time-bomb urgency to the darkwave pop score. It’s a track not dissimilar to Johnny Jewel and his Chromatics cinematics, reminding us that Pike and Deyell have both played with electro-punks Liars. Then there’s “Ash and Snow” which could be the desolate noise of red rain falling. “Before Time” suggests the echoes from some primeval plasma, while “Island Falls” evokes a glacial wash of underwater burbling.

The closing piece “First Meeting” is seven minutes of manic frequencies, deep rumbles and fraught guitars. It feels live and spontaneous, yet neither musician was in the same room during this album’s genesis. Despite the separation, Pike and Deyell conduct their own cosmic orchestra on this dramatic and compelling album.

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