Album Review: Ryan Francesconi & Mirabai Peart - Road To Palios

Guitarist Ryan Francesconi, known for his arrangements on Joanna Newsom's Have One On Me, and violinist Mirabai Peart have created one of the warmest and most inviting records of the year. The record begins with Parallel Flights, a very suitable track name considering just how matched these players are.

Road To Palios is an instrumental record featuring no notable overdubs or studio trickery – the only sounds we hear are the interplaying guitar and violin. Lacking a traditional rhythm section, the guitar (always more riff and repetition-ready than a violin) often finds itself the pacekeeper for Peart's violin to dance over. This is not to slight the evocative guitar work though; on tracks like Kalamatianos and the playful title cut, Francesconi gets real room to move and show off, though the record never feels self-indulgent.

The delicate and particularly composed music evokes the feeling of a foreign land – there are streams of Greek folk music here to be sure (fans of Psarantonis will find much to love), but even so, the foreign feeling extends beyond this. Francesconi and Peart have done a beautiful job of creating a world here – you'll feel lost, home and intrigued all at once.

The usual complaints levelled against non-experimental instrumental music will likely be made here; there's not enough variation, it blends into the background, it's emotionally uniform. And these criticisms are not entirely unfounded, but the record stands up beautifully and we, as listeners, can feel privileged to hear this duo create for us a world that is entirely theirs.