Martin Küchen and Sophie Agnel - Detour Tunnels of Light

Detour Tunnels of Light is the debut duo album from renowned improvisers Martin Küchen and Sophie Agnel. On the recording, made in a Swedish church in February 2022, they combine the raw and the delicate, blending slow swinging percussion with a hissing sopranino sax and a cracked, symphonic grand piano – like a vintage music box. Relying on what maybe underlies all sound and music making, the duo ventures musically into the undercurrents of existence, inviting chance at any given moment. Together they’re shaping a perpetuum mobile of sounds, of breath and dignity.

“Having expectations and then being pleasantly disabused of those expectations.

In my experience listening to the music of both Martin Küchen and Sophie Agnel, I’ve often detected what I perceive to be a (sometimes hidden) strain of romanticism, a deep and dark vaguely lyrical content that one doesn’t routinely identify with free improvisers. With Küchen, this could be heard most prominently in his solo recordings such as ‘The Lie and the Orphanage’ (Mathka, 2010) or ‘Hellstorm’ (Mathka, 2012). I had also heard Agnel give a memorable solo piano recital in Västerås, Sweden in 2012 where the closest comparison I could think of (not really that close) was to some of the music of Fredric Rzewski. So I came into this release with some of those expectations in mind.

But no. Instead we have four pieces, each one a quiet, even delicate exploration of sound, combining gently probing piano passages, including relatively fragile sounds from within the instrument to soft, if perhaps forlorn and even strangulated moans from the reeds. The soundscape created is sparse in one sense but really quite well populated with “small”, beautifully related objects, bits that reflect off of one another in a manner that implies seriously deep listening on the part of both musicians. A lovely, thoughtful set all around, one that happily upset my expectations.”