Inside Voice / Outside Voice by Michael Bisio and Timothy Hill

For non-musicians, free-jazz often feels disorienting and uninviting, as musicians communicate with one another using a language that we find difficult to understand. However, Michael Bisio and Timothy Hill made Inside Voice / Outside Voice to dispel this unfair public perception, inviting the listener into the room with them as a third communicator. Unlike much free jazz, this record contains a component of vocal jazz (think Sinatra) with vocal hooks that align with mainstream sensibilities. In such an improvised context, such vocals often come across as the whistling of a person in the midst of a psychotic break, trying desperately to calm themselves down, but a closer inspection reveals that our subject here is undergoing no distress at all. Inside Voice / Outside Voice offers a crash course in creative communication, a mode of speaking that transcends culture, time, and place to bring people together.

-Michael