DUDE, YOU'RE GETTING, LIKE, TOTALLY HYPER

Hyperpiano vs HyperBass Flute: It's a steel-cage death-match between two traditional instruments that have been modified to create very strange new sounds, recorded in improvised duets. Not for the faint of heart! In this corner,

Denman Maroney and his Hyperpiano; taking Cage's prepared piano to undreamed-of extremes, Maroney assaults his instrument "...by stopping, sliding, bowing, plucking, strumming and striking the strings directly with a variety of tools including bars, bowls, knives, bells and mashers of metal, boxes and bottles of plastic, mallets of various kinds, and blocks of rubber." Needless to say, the resulting buzzing and clanging sounds almost nothing like any piano music you've heard before.

The prolific Maroney is part of the New York oddball experimental scene that includes cats like the Gamelan Son of Lion big band, but his Duologues album with bassist Mark Dresser really gives his Hyperpiano a chance to grab the spotlight.

Maroney & Dresser: Bali Nigh
Maroney & Dresser: Bendango

And in the other corner...

Roberto Fabbriciani on his gigantic HyperBass Flute, an instrument you don't hear so much as feel - it's burbles and rumbles beneath Esther Lamneck's flights of fancy on her clarinet-like Hungarian tarogato. The title of their Innova Records release "Winds of The Heart" may sound like the name of a soap opera, but there's nothing corny about these untitled improvised duets. Lamneck's Eastern European influences give the music a bit of an exotic feel.

Fabbriciani& Lamneck: track 9
Fabbriciani& Lamneck: track 12