Chö / Cho

Innovative guitarist Steve Tibbetts accompanies Tibetan nun Choying Drolma on sporadic guitar, synthesizer and percussion on chants for meditation, spontaneous songs of realization and teremas brought back from the other world. For much of the disc he lets long silences unwind behind Drolma's resonant vocals before adding a thoughtful chord of his own or feeding back to her a processed sample of her own voice-a often, you can't tell which is which because Tibbets' contributions tilt toward the abstract. Overall the match between the collaborators strikes a good balance, such as on "Kyema Mimin," where he surprises by wrapping a multi-tracked chant in cymbal taps and drums, and on "Shengshik Pema Jungney," which Tibbetts' acoustic alchemy transports to a Gothic Christian space.