“Racheal Cogan and Tony Lewis … are so brassed off by the philistines to note that the Australia Council declined to contribute to their project. This is a shame, because their album Transience (OM 602), despite its unusual feature of recorders (Racheal) and non-western percussion, has much to recommend it. Mind you, these are recorders as you have probably never heard them. Simply subtitled Contemporary Modal Music, many of the pieces are the result of two years Racheal spent in Greece learning from, and inspired by, musicians such as Ross Daly, Kelly Thoma, and Fardin Karamkhani. Two Daly pieces, a Turkish sufi ilahi (learnt from Thoma) and a Macedonian skopianos sit easily alongside Racheal’s own traditionally influenced compositions. Apart from the obvious influences, Racheal occasionally effects plangent and even oriental tones with Middle Eastern swirls, and Tony’s percussion tends to be nicely understated. This has to be a new direction for recorders and is well worth hearing.