A Pulse Passes is the first collaborative recording between Martin and Young. This project was dreamt up while Martin was on tour with Young's project Sontag Shogun in April 2014, as a meeting place between the lush ambient layerings of cello, guitar and tape-collage textures, and conceived in the months to follow. Each piece begins with a tape-loop cut from short piano compositions by Young, and is then augmented brick by brick in fluid, stream-of-consciousness instrumental improvisations. The four repeating tape splices never quite retreat too far from the foreground, and as the textures become more and more lush, the loops seem to change their definition, adapting endlessly to the sonics around them. Minimal electronic treatment serves only as a binding element here, yet it is the raw and untampered integrity of the instrumentals that sits at the core of this collaboration. These four works are true meditations on a theme, laid down onto an...