What do you do when you're a musician in New Orleans during a pandemic? You do like everybody else: You make music. In Byron Asher's case, he bought a four-track (with only three working tracks) and started recording and passing the recorder over the fence to next-door neighbor (and drummer) Brad Webb. Back and forth and away they went.

Byron Asher & Brad Webb Little Bigby (ears&eyes)

Asher plays just about anything, but on this set he confines himself to clarinets and saxophones. Webb's percussion helps tie together Asher's flights of fancy. These pieces are strikingly lyrical for improvised works; there are the occasional flashes of car-crash pyrotechnics, but gorgeous lines (often built upon bass clarinet and bari sax drones) predominate.

It's easy to hear how these pieces evolved over time, with each new element overdubbed over previous sessions. Very an assembled work and not the work of a band, but that level of care added to the freedom of improvisation makes for an exhilarating listen.

It seems like every musician in the world has been recording for the last two years. I've never seen a volume of releases like the one that has been flowing since September. I don't care for a lot of the music (probably in the usual proportion), but the sheer quantity is overwhelming. Even so, when something like this alights on my ears, I sit up and pay attention. It's a quirky set that probably won't go down as the tenth best thing either of these musicians has put together. But there's something about the claustrophobic wonder infused into this album that compels. Bewitching.

Jon Worley