10 years after their debut, ???? ?? ??? ?????, audio-visual enquirers John B McKenna and Richard Greenan re-appear as Devonanon, to share the findings of a decade-long sonic experiment.
Like its predecessor, ??????? & ???? is a living, breathing collection of field recordings and compositions, gathered gradually from remote corners of the pair's lives. Familiar waypoints - interwoven microtonal synths, regurgitated live performances, polite whispering, and the gurgling hum of vehicles (land and sea) - all fold into the perpetual stew.
Where ???? read like a crumpled postcard account of fraternal reportage, ??????? & ???? is a tone poem on something more amorphous, and out of time - a garbled history of human closeness, upheaval and mark-making, that seems to buckle and creak like a tapestry with no beginning or end.
No two spoonfuls are the same, as our story reels through kosmische library stylings ('Wilderness Engine'), to cortex-quieting free association ('Generate Countryside'), and baroque instrumentation ('Blood Laughing', which features beautiful turns from Masayoshi Fujita on vibraphone, and Rosa Juritz on bassoon).
Recommended if you like CS + Kreme, Pierre Mariétan, Kirk Barley. ??????? & ???? was created in conversation with the visual artist David Huang.