Thriving on many's a riff - manna for bassists. What a highly unusual two-bass album with a little piano from each of the players thrown in for good measure.

Christian McBride is a dazzling player, one of the world's best jazz double bassists, and he and his peer Edgar Meyer, who is known for bluegrass and classical music including work with Chris Thile, swap arco and plucked bass roles for sheer kicks and more importantly to tell a story, the contrasts in attack and mobility each style allows feeding into a fluency the two rhythm masters conjured.

In March 2016 marlbank attended a concert the two gave at London's Wigmore Hall and recall some impressions of it again. Not one but two double bassists on stage together was certainly an unsual experience, no microphones, no effects, the only distraction, an extra, when each of the bassists sat down in the interests of variety to accompany each other briefly on the piano. Christian McBride, who grinned at the audacity of the task at hand, Edgar Meyer deadpanning that the two were touring in a format “without historical precedent” the sets were just about the right length and the time passed quickly enough but no, a concert featuring even two of the best bass players you could find anywhere, doesn’t quite satisfy.

Meyer in his set-up deepened his bass range for the low notes with a stick extender on his scroll and besides the extra depth facilitated his style is noticeably different to McBride’s, his sliding action and less beefy tone hugely slippery and responsive: he can go up and down octaves in a heartbeat and you can almost feel he is a step away from a hoedown or interloper at a banjo duel. The best bits that night were the classic jazz standards including ‘My Funny Valentine’ and ‘Stella by Starlight’ the latter a delight opening the second set, and most fun was ‘FRB’ as in “forget Ray Brown” a riff on a Ray Brown initiative to render ‘FSR’ who forgot Sonny Rollins by altering the shout chorus to avoid borrowing too much of ‘Doxy’ for royalty reasons.

The material on this new studio recording is faithful to the live experience. Tunes are 'Green Slime,' 'Barnyard Disturbance,' 'Bebop of Course,' 'Bass Duo #1,' 'Solar,' 'Canon,' 'Philly Slop,' 'Interlude #1,' 'FRB 2DB,' 'Bewitched, Bothered and Bewildered,' 'Bass Duo,' 'Lullaby for a Ladybug,' 'Days of Wine and Roses,' 'Interlude' and 'Tennessee Blues.'

Just as at the live concert we liked the jazz elements better than the bluegrass slanted material but the intermingling is another layer and again that is stimulating - the pick of the tunes is easily the infectiously compelling 'Philly Slop.'

Christian McBride, Edgar Meyer, photo: Anna Webber