Morgan Szymanski and Tommy Perman are childhood friends, which goes a long way towards explaining the subtly of how their musical collaboration works. On the duo’s second outing together, Songs For The Mist Forest, the classically trained Szymanski’s guitar takes centre stage, while Perman’s electronics are totally understated. Seeking none of the spotlight, serving only to frame and illuminate his friend’s playing. 

The album is constructed, crafted, around recordings made at Szymanski’s ranch in the mist forests of Valle de Bravo, Mexico, and has a serious message at its core. Through their sampling of this habitat the 11 compositions hope to highlight an ecological crisis, and the plights of numerous species threatened with extinction by the area’s overdevelopment. The pieces serve as an aural snapshot. For 30 minutes or so, you’ll feel as if you’re sat on Szymanski’s porch serenaded not only by his guitar, but birds, crickets, and Abronias –  a local species of lizard. 

The picking and plucking throughout is Spanish-flavoured. The fluid, intricate fretwork sometimes squeezing in mandolin-like figures, as on the opener We All Rise With The Sun. A track whose playfulness recalls Dr Rockit’s classic Cafe de Flore. Birds Of Paradise is Mojave heat haze of beautifully blue, bent Ry Cooder, Paris, Texas notes. 

In places, Perman sometimes adds a sympathetic beat. Dance Of The Fireflies, slow siesta fare, is accompanied by little castanet-like clicks. On Esperanza it’s a broken shuffle. On Harmonic Rain, a dance of delicate steel string tones, it’s a lapping of slapping and clapping, while Canción del Adiós, a border town ballad featuring the friends in vocal chorus, boasts a dance floor-friendly bump.

The layered organic counterpoint of Lullaby For Angie could slot right alongside the Penguin Cafe Orchestra at sunset, and La Rosa de los Cuatro Vientos, with its sleepy, wheezy, panpipe-like melody* and morning after mariachi brass, similarly stirs a PCO-esque global folk, chamber music melting pot.  

*This could quite easily have been blown across the tops of filled / emptied moonshine jugs. 

Morgan Szymanski & Tommy Perman’s Songs For The Mist Forest can be ordered directly from Blackford Hill.