Since the 1980s, alto saxophonist/composer/record company micro-mogul Tim Berne has operated in multiple settings, releasing albums with prolific regularity and restlessly creative energy. Something relatively new is afoot with his new sax-acoustic guitar duet with Gregg Belisle-Chi, of the sort we haven't heard since Berne's fascinating and now hard-to-find 1984 duet recording with Bill Frisell, Theoretically.

Critical backstory: Nimble-fingered guitarist Belisle-Chi worked his way into Berne's world via his impressive 2021 solo guitar album Koi, interpreting Berne's music. Not surprisingly, given the guitarist's sensitive approach to Berne's musical language, they get along famously in a duet context. Conversation flows freely between them, with digressive chatter and contrapuntal spiciness in the mix to keep things lively. Despite the serious nature of Berne's music and playing - though never brooding or lacking in drive or energy - his innately, wily sense of humor sneaks in via his song titles. Some of the tracks here relate to the eating arts, as in "Gastrophobia" (fear of eating?), “Big Belly" and "Microtuna."

Opening the album, the punningly named "Rose Bowl Charade" sets the stage for what's to come, through Berne's melody line. Nattering, stuttering heated notes peel off into angular flurries and generally keep our ears in suspended mode: Berne's happy place. Sentimentality has no sway here, as is Berne's wont, but he can find angular roots to heartfelt expressions.

Five years back, the circuitous melodic journeys and rhythmic contrariness of Tim Berne's music spawned a brilliant devotee in pianist Matt Mitchell, whose dedication to the New York one-off's composing inspired the remarkable solo-piano album of Berne interpretations, Førage.

Last year, another quirkily gifted connoisseur turned up in the shape of young acoustic guitarist Gregg Belisle-Chi, with the comparably imaginative solo session Koi: Performing the Music of Tim Berne. Now, Mars brings Berne's alto and Belisle-Chi's guitar together on a dozen short dialogues around the composer's pieces, produced by David Torn.

The acoustic guitar's necessary fragility, and the intimacy of this partnership, casts Berne's music in a different and in some ways warmer light, and though Belisle-Chi distils the compositions to their essentials, these tracks nonetheless radiate immense vividness. The guitar chimes quietly behind the softly buzzy twists and turns of the alto sax on 'Gastrophobia, pillows its soulful dreaminess on 'Middle Seat Blues', shepherds the busy melodic lines of 'Dark Shadows', skips brightly around the Ornettish 'Giant Squids'. Without cranking up the percussiveness, Belisle-Chi imparts a mysterious momentum to these serpentine tunes - his folk-bluesy relentlessness and scatterings of lateral melody drive 'Big Belly' long before Berne's free-jazzy alto floats into the picture, while the pair are animatedly joined at the hip on the episodic 'Palm Sweat'. By paring Tim Berne's music to the bone, Gregg Belisle-Chi may just have helped his hero to unveil fascinating new stories within it.