Without wishing to resort to the tired theme of the challenge, every time a pair of drummers set out on a creative duo act, it’s only half-obvious that it’s difficult to mesh the thing without falling into either mimetic drumming, festival logic of the drum circle which is after all a line, or improvisational disaster. Sunny Morgan’s Percussion Ensemble with Milford Grave would have advanced the proposal a lot, continued a few years later with the self-explanatory ‘Dialogue of the Drums’ of the latter with Andrew Cyrille, but for all intents and purposes and past the visual apparatus of the two drums in collision, it’s still a terrain little experienced with real value. João Pais Filipe has done it with dignity and vision with Valentina Magaletti in CZN – new record in the pipeline, by the way – and now incurs in a new symbiosis face to face with Pedro Melo Alves, giving continuity to a residence in gnration in Braga. Invariably distinct from that meeting, given the personalities of the two musicians, between their already established language and departures outside the comfort zone, the music of this duo reflects a symbiotic communication, based on the timbric, rhythmic and harmonic exploration of skins, metals, woods and gongs – the latter forged by Pais Filipe -, in a time where hypnotic rhythms, textural passages, polyrhythms and fiery cleavages cohabit. Two musicians in intense activity, with João Pais Filipe always busy between the construction of gongs and cymbals, his duo with Burnt Friedman, HHY & the Macumbas or solo and Pedro Melo Alves in broad rotation mainly in the interstices of jazz of rock and improvised music, through his ventures in the post-rockers Catacombe, in The Rite of Trio, in the duo with trumpeter João Almeida, in the recent trio of trumpeter Luís Vicente or in his Omniae Ensemble. BS