Covarino, an Italian living in Spain, and Sage, a Coloradoan residing in Chicago, hooked up for the first time at the tail-end of 2017 to put together these beautifully subtle duets, revealing an instant connection extending beyond their shared love for pizza and chili peppers. Covarino's shuffling percussion, full of snuffled rim-shots and hi-hat stutter, detonate in micro paroxysms of propulsion, as Sage drapes his guitar filigrees over the atmospheric clatter, peeling off deconstructed blues licks in the manner of Bill Frisell or The Dirty Three's Mick Turner, before breaking into more explicit melodic statements during the exquisite ‘A Knocked Urn’. This is dustbowl jazz, where Paul Motian's mood music is conveyed to the backwater dioramas of Breece D'J Pancake and nostalgic dreams unravel on the graveyard shift.