For nearly six years now, modular synth alchemist Matt Carlson and bass clarinetist Jonathan Sielaff have plied their trade as cosmic explorers in the Berlin School tradition. Early recordings mined the expansive possibilities that modular synthesis allows, but their recent efforts for Thrill Jockey pare down the duo’s focus considerably and distilled the upward thrust of their compositions into something more coherent.

“Flight Song", from Golden Retriever's forthcoming LP Seer, demonstrates the duo at their most focused. Carlson’s skittering synth parts function as a gridlike structure for Sielaff’s amorphous clarinet peals to weave in and out of. If aviation is the metaphor that the duo are sticking with, the piece seems to hew closer toward biological rather than mechanized flight. Nothing ever clicks into the satisfying mathematical oneness that you might expect of the work of Klaus Schulze or Tangerine Dream, the two obvious forebears of Golden Retriever’s aesthetic. Instead, Sielaff and Carlson embrace the drift.