High-Voltage Piano/Bass Duels and Conversations From Eunhye Jeong and Minki Cho

Pianist Eunhye Jeong’s previous album The Colliding Beings was an epic live recording of ancient Korean pansori themes reinvented as free jazz. Her latest album, Abyss, is a series of duo improvisations with bassist Minki Cho, streaming at Bandcamp. It’s somewhat less expansive: no 25-minute songs this time around.

There’s a persistent good cop/bad cop dynamic between the steady, purposeful bassist and the restless pianist. Unearthly tones, whether keening in the harmonics of the upper registers or the stygian lows, come to the forefront in the duo’s first number, Head Sea. Jeong goes under the piano lid before she moves in, hard, on the piano’s low midrange, while Cho bows and then holds the center, motorboat riffs against a scurry.

Purple Beans has flitting piano accents against a calmer, more circular bass center. The two coalesce, then diverge tensely through a series of tritones, Jeong growing more frantic until Cho centers the music.

Surface Tension begins with churning, rattling atmospherics, Cho running loopy bass variations as Jeong hammers and circles; this time it’s her turn to break the spell. Thumbnail Sketch, the closest reference to swing here, begins with jaunty lowrange flourishes and insistence from the piano against steady bass. The two musicians rise to a coy parody of fanfare and then an anvil chorus which finally gives way to a deadpan, stern conclusion.

Kindred has funkier rhythms, some particularly explosive moments from Jeong and also an unexpectedly icy, terse duet midway through. The closing number, Dokdo 1696 is built around minimalist, suspenseful variations on an octave bass riff, up to some tasty Messiaenic upper-register piano and another anvil chorus, Cho playing voice of reason again. The album also includes a couple of spacious solo bass miniatures.