Christina Kubisch & Fabrizio Plessi - Two And Two (1977)

In the early 70s, Christina Kubisch (b. 1948, Bremen) was a trained musician and composer; Fabrizio Plessi (b. 1940, Reggio Eimilia) was a painter.  A meeting at a summer workshop sparked a collaboration that would satisfy both their desires to do something different, and their first performance project, Two And Two, would lead to lifelong work as sound & visual installation artists.

This album of the soundtrack to Two And Two, which they'd been performing for over three years, was released in 1977.  This is where I do the well-rehearsed line that always crops up in posts where the music had an integral visual/performance element: you might only be able to imagine the full performance when the sound is captured on record (there are some images of the performance video screens on the album cover), but the sound here is enjoyable enough in and of itself that it stands up to repeated listens as a great experimental album.

The chosen instrumentation was mostly non-standard, and conceived with great ingenuity that would've provided another striking visual element to performances.  The four pieces are titled Earth, Fire, Air and Water, with sounds chosen to invoke these elements to varying degrees.  Earth features Kubisch on alto flute and voice, and Plessi on cello with the strings electronically vibrated.  It's the most musical of the pieces, creating a rumbling drone that anticipates post-millennium Einstürzende Neubauten by decades.

Fire is simply based on Plessi using a contact mic on a metal fan, whilst Kubisch plays slide whistle.  Her use of the instrument is particularly inspired, transforming a sound best known for comic relief into something sounding like a forlorn robot spinning in circles as it malfunctions in the fire.  Here's another well-worn SGTG line for Air: Kubisch's flute sans headpiece sounds like a more fully-developed version of Kraftwerk 2's outer limits, before Plessi's unsettling accordion drone pulls it back to the more ambient-industrial moments of Kraftwerk 1.  Last but not least, Water features Kubisch recording some metronomes whilst Plessi sprays steel drums with a water jet, creating a melodic progression of sorts.  Engrossing and highly enjoyable stuff.

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