The expectations one brings to a live performance can be complicated. There’s straight-up fandom – being in the same space as the person whose work you love, seeing them in the flesh and maybe having them see you. There’s the hope that the pressure of performing live will pull something special out of the artist, some thrilling technical mastery or virtuosic singing or playing that they might not reach in the confines of a recording studio. Then there’s the built-in evanescence of a performance, the unrepeatable, one-time-only element that gives any show an additional charge. Finally, there’s the experience of watching someone believe in themselves for you, seeing someone live out the dream you maybe can’t get to on your own.

It’s no wonder then that live recordings are so often disappointing. So much of them have to do with the physical presence of both performer and audience – something that can’t be manufactured.

Live In London from Ryuichi Sakamoto and Taylor Deupree was originally released in 2016 but only as a double LP. 12k, Deupree’s label, has seen fit to make a digital recording of the entire concert available, and if you’re at all familiar with the work of either of these forward-thinking and boundary-stretching musicians, then you should definitely check this out.

There’s palpable tension running beneath the placid surface of this pristine recording. Deupree starts things off by laying down a benevolent, pulsating layer of tones and, almost immediately, Sakamoto can be heard strumming on the strings inside the upper register of his piano, producing a brittle, glassy sound as both a counterbalance and means of introduction. He further explores his instrument, playing the body of it both inside and out while only occasionally playing an actual note or two. Deupree’s backdrop is anything but static, however, as it acquires richer tones and overtones while continuing its steady throb. The two artists quickly and impressively establish a harmonious synchrony, a connection they maintain and deepen throughout the fifty-five minutes of their performance.

About eight minutes in, Deupree’s reclusive backdrop takes a somewhat sinister, alien turn, as elements of hiss encroach and an intermittent rumble trades places with a soured, atonal buzz. Sakamoto abandons notes almost entirely in this stretch (except for an obsessive, repetitive, surprisingly humorous march of low-end strikes on the keyboard) in favor of the solidly percussive, continuing his attack on the piano body itself. When the low-end march is done, we’re suddenly at the edge of a field steeped in fog. The soundtrack composer in Sakamoto appears, sawing and bending his piano strings against Deupree’s ethereal sonic mist, and together we move forward into the unknown, as Deupree and Sakamoto fuse their approaches and styles into something exploratory, cautious, and pleasingly immediate.

What comes through so forcefully in this recording is the sense of shared commitment from Sakamoto and Deupree, not to self-expression per se but to the creation and exploration of the work at hand. This is music about disappearance, about erasure of the artist’s ego, about surrendering of the self to what the given moment offers. There are no blistering solos, no spotlight-on-me moments. Instead there’s curiosity and patience, movement and discovery, music and sound. Given the distilled results of the work, it’s no surprise that Deupree and Sakamoto are both relentless collaborators, the two of them individually having worked with, among others, David Sylvian, Richard Chartier, P.I.L., Simon Scott, and more recently Alva Noto. (The two of them also recorded an album together on 12k in 2013 called, appropriately enough, Disappearance. I strongly recommend it.)

On Live In London, the idea of time gradually dissolves and is replaced by sound. Deupree unfurls a breathing canvas against which Sakamoto splashes an array of multi-colored chords and prismatic idea fragments. Silence arrives, is considered and afforded small spaces between notes, but is never allowed to settle in. More space is opened, accompanied by a frozen, leaking sound, as if a small hole has been torn in the universe. Everything gets slowly sucked toward that opening, so much so that when I hear an audience member cough and I’m suddenly back on earth, I’m not disappointed so much as amazed at how far away I’d managed to get.

And we’re only halfway through at that point.

Collaborations between formidable talents don’t always yield the most vital results. One listen to Live In London, however, and you’ll understand why this was re-released. This is a live recording that feels absolutely alive. It’s special and deserves a new audience.