Multi-woodwind instrumentalist and electronics musician/composer Sean Mac Erlaine works in musical areas where seemingly disparate worlds merge: tradition and modernity; acoustic and electronic; improvised and structured sounds. These are the threads that run throughout his work. Slender Songs is a continuation of concepts that Mac Erlaine explored on Long After The Music is Gone (Ergodos Records, 2012), a haunting solo meditation inspired by the Irish landscape and its light. The ten selections here—culled from live performances between 2010 and 2013—range from two and a half to four and a half minutes in length and work their hypnotic charms best when absorbed in one uninterrupted sitting.

Ambient mood music only begins to hint at the essence of Mac Erlaine's craft, though there's dreamy abstraction in spades. Meditative drones and ambient sound-waves form the canvas for Mac Erlaine's minimalist woodwind colors though rarely follow the same course for long, either undulating or fading in and out. Breathy exhalations that whisper like breeze or rasp like lung death-rattle meet electronically processed sounds in striking symbiosis. Soprano and bass clarinets are Mac Erlaine's chief instruments, with loops and electronic effects equal protagonists in the mix.

The tracks are the equivalent of musical short stories. On "Balcea" low static drone and a quietly throbbing pulse provide a subtle backdrop to isolated, electronically filtered clarinet notes that chime like a distant train's horn; a kernel of a melody briefly flickers before evaporating. A pulsing note accentuates the sparse architecture of "Ripple the Pond," where a gently meandering melody with an EWI-type timbre is punctuated by intermittent electronic accents. Greater lyricism colors "All Sung a Slender Song," where braying bass clarinet gives way to a