Released: 2023
Whatever way you look at it, happiness is best when it’s spontaneous. Too much of the fabric of our lives now are scheduled, regimented, forced: under the constant oppression of commentary, media and self limiting guard rails, the human race has forgotten how not to process the simplicity of joy.
Meg Duffy was better known as the co-founder of Hand Habits, whilst Gregory Uhlmann had played live with Perfume Genius before the pair formed the less than snappily entitled duo Duffy x Uhlmann in 2023. Recorded at the latter’s brother’s house in single takes, the resulting all instrumental album Doubles found them interplaying as aesthetes, latterly passing on the chance to overdub or otherwise disturb their eddying mutual flow.
Etch is the kind of moment which comes from this symbiosis, a single thread being pulled this way and that. With the guitars dressed in echo and reverb, the picked melodies are sparkling and clear, the duo taking up the impetus in relay when the other leans back. If spontaneity is the last thing we have left by which to define ourselves, then there are fewer soundtracks better to steal it with than this.
The Voice Of Unreason 