Until recently, we were living under the sad assumption that long-running Texas experimental/improvisational duo Charalambides had all but split. Though the band had been quite prolific up until 2011, releasing both official and widely distributed albums and tiny, impossible to find limited edition releases, the group’s core of Christina and Tom Carter have not released anything together in seven long years, though both maintained a steady release of solo material. So it was a surprise to learn that they had come together in the fall of 2017 for a handful of improv sessions, which have just been released as Charalambides: Tom & Christina Carter. Aside from the absence of new material call absolutely nothing has changed; their music is still dark, haunting, occasionally disturbing, at times abrasive, and almost always quite beautiful. We love every minute of this 80 minute behemoth, most especially the unsettling “Proper,” which finds the duo building up a dark landscape, which is punctuated by Christina’s singing that sounds amazingly like a lone violin off in the distance. Here’s hoping the new record opens up the floodgates to more material from this amazing experimental music institution.
The Recoup 
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