Leo Kottke & Mike Gordon

Think back to an exercise found in Highlights magazine, the one where you had to compare objects and mark which one was not like the other. Scholars of finger-picking or lovers of the six- or twelve-string guitar and its masters would circle Mike Gordon, while followers of twenty-minute improvisational rock opuses would circle Leo Kottke. But who better than Gordon -- his talent as Phish's bassist so often overshadowed by the monstrosity of the band's scene -- to team up with Kottke, an elusive and at times reclusive genius and a pillar in the world of finger-picking? The music, with its precision and quirk, is almost exactly what you'd expect from Gordon. And somehow the duo also manages to be exactly what you've come to expect from Kottke: simple and simply perfect.