Isaac Newton's titular law states that “for every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction” – and that principle is a perfect jumping off point for this debut recording from multi-instrumentalist Martin Slattery and bassist Jon Thorne.

In their former (and present) musical lives both have stalked stadium stages, Slattery with Joe Strummer – who once joked that, “Slattery could play a hole in the windshield of the tour bus” such is his musicality – and Thorne with festival favourites Lamb and the sublime Yorkston/Thorne/Khan Indo-folk trio. Yet for this intimate duologue, Slattery matches Thorne's oak-like woody bass tones, which have a habit of burrowing root-deep, with his lithe yet mournful alto sax and fruity bass clarinet overtones. He also jumps behind the kit to supply attitudinal break beats on several tracks. The opposite reaction here though is to our increasingly dystopian age, and the slamming-on of fuzz boxes on sax and bowed-bass adds a fractious edge in places, but it's the undertow of moody blues that gives this compelling melancholic face-off its power. The growling b-line of ‘Into The Woods (The Last Sin)’ could easily soundtrack a whacked-out scene from Twin Peaks, while the slow burn of ‘Crowning Thieves’ has Slattery's delay-enabled cries hovering like crows in a darkening sky. The two-part title track, sub-headed ‘Wounded All’ and ‘Duality’, utilise cinematic effects as ghostly reverbs and spectral loops haunt the stereo image. A pitch-perfect suite for uncertainty, there's redemption and solace to be found here, for our golden age of the apocalypse.