Another gem from the ECM vaults that has never previously been reissued on compact disc, Five Years Later – referring to the participants' previous collaboration Sargasso Sea from five years earlier – comes with original cover art and album annotations in an attractive cardboard gatefold pack. Recorded in 1981, this crafty blending of opposites resulted in a subtle personal chemistry that has eliminated the jarring, the rebarbative or the repetitive. Using a variety of guitars, these eight duets do not lack for tonal variety, and such is the nature of a collaboration such as this can figure as both subtle and pleasing background music or wholly absorbing foreground music. One of the album's highlights, ‘Caminata’, achieves its end as solos blur into the theme and accompaniment blurs into the solos to create a constantly refracting prism of sound.