Andy Moor was once the guitarist for The Ex, but little of that agitprop, post-punk group's characteristics flavor this duo recording with computerist McLean. Recorded live in Amsterdam (a place where avant-gardism apparently has the ability to run quite free) a few years back as part of a series of performance pieces where musicians and dancers intermingle and freely improvise, Everything but the Beginning is that rarest of animals, a recording of provocative, arresting sounds whose joins are unnoticeable, where the ideas themselves are seamless in both concept and execution. Simply put, this is a wholly immersive work of art that even bereft of its formal affiliation stands on its own as an uncategorizable slab of vibrant, progressive sound.

Moor's playing throughout alternates between spiky, Keith Levene-esque shards of notes, elongated drones, and swift attacks of fast-stroked (anti)chords, instigated without any other rhyme or reason except to perfectly compliment his partner's many-hued processes. Placed alongside McLean's seemingly limitless palette of sounds (everything from field recordings to unidentifiable crowd noises and strange vocal mutterings, and all manners of samples, slurry, and slippages), Moor becomes both foil and foiler, playing off of McLean's puzzle box soundscapes with intuitive ease. It's refreshing that the two never allow their creations to devolve into meaningless noise or aberrant chaos; a piece like "Rapid Ear Movement" comes close, thanks to Moor's metal machine grind, but at only a sparse two-and-a-half minutes, it feels more in tune with the oddities that have preceded it rather than a statement of intent. "My Electric Dreams" could have easily popped up on an Ikue Mori record, a similarly toned piece of digital crackle and backwards strings that fairly dances within its own peculiar environs, eventually generating a rhythmic bloopfest that approaches IDM territory.

As the disc progresses, Moor and McLean cover much territory, Moor's decisive playing never getting overshadowed by McLean's tasteful, if expertly designed and triangulated, pyrotechnics; he is, in fact, a little known sound-scaper who is deserved of higher recognition. On "The Flower of Fixed Ideas," the squeaky pallor of McLean's laptop dalliances achieves a near-psychedelic synchronicity with Moor's thorny phrasings. Opulent and opaque, the piece neatly summarizes one of the few truly original recordings to surface in this or any other year.

Colin McLean / Andy Moor: Everything but the Beginning Is On Sale at Squidco!