Inside Voice / Outside Voice

Covering standards can be risky business, especially when someone has previously put an indelible stamp on a tune, the way Johnny Hartman and John Coltrane did on "My One and Only Love" and Chet Baker on "I Fall in Love Too Easily."

But on this cleverly titled recording with Michael Bisio, singer/guitarist Timothy Hill takes possession of those classics, as well as "For All We Know" (made famous by Nat King Cole) allowing us to hear new subtitles in the lyrics and melodies, and feel how he approaches the songs with vulnerability and affection.

The duo arrived at this one-continuous-take session with deep avant-garde and experimental experience, including Bisio's with Matthew Shipp, Ivo Perlman, and Joe McPhee, and Hill's with David Hykes and the Harmonic Choir, John Cage, Iva Bittová, and Hindustani and Tibetan vocalizing.

Their improvisations and extended techniques on acoustic bass and guitar take surprising turns but stay intimately connected, even when they get ferally abstract for a couple of minutes here and there.
And Hill's multi-pitch overtone singing, especially when melded into Bisio's arco drones, takes the music into mystical realms where folk, jazz, classical and devotional traditions become one, where there is no boundary separating inside and outside.

4 1/2 Stars - MUSIC / 5 Stars - SONICS