COLLETTE, NED/JAMES RUSHFORD/JOE TALIA - Afternoon-Dusk

Ned Collette's last album, the 2LP set Old Chestnut (FTR 362-2LP), was hailed as a masterpiece by 'most everyone who heard it. Part of this was due to the darkly delicate lyrics and vocals of Ned himself (akin to the work of Graeme Jefferies, ca. This Kind of Punishment), but much was also due to the elegant lyricism of the music, which had a fantastic prog/folk heft as impossible to peg as it was to ignore. With this new LP, Collette (an Australian ex-pat, now based in Berlin) goes all-instrumental, along with his long-time drumming partner, Joe Talia (fellow ex-pat, now in Tokyo), and composer James Rushford (also from Australia) on viola. The two, side-long tracks are a departure from the pop formatting of Old Chestnut, but an expansion of that album's instrumental passages, playing with a syncretic fusion of several genres, while remaining beholden to none. Talia -- who has been working with Collette for over a decade, but is perhaps best known in the U.S. as Jim O'Rourke's drummer