Simplexity?

Sometimes, simple ideas are the best. Not that I'm averse to complex, densely arranged music (unless it's by Yes, then I'm very much against it, but that's another rant entirely), but listening to it can be a similar experienece to walking through an ornamental garden, leading you to appreciate the shapes, the structure, the interleaving and juxtapostion of form and line, but not necessarily to an appreciation of the beauty of the materials themselves, be they sounds or plants. Complexity can be beautiful, but it's often a shallow, surface beauty. A forest is a wonderful thing, but looking at a single tree can be a far richer experience, allowing the eye to be guided by the ridges and loops of the bark, the twisting of the branches, the subtle gradations of colour in the wood and leaves. Stand back though, and you lose that richness, that closeness, that depth of experience and perception.
I guess this is why, after years of playing in groups of up to ten people, I find that the majority of the music I make these days is in duos. When there's just two of you, you can hear everything. Every tiny inflection and nuance of timbre is laid bare and because of this you're more aware, better able to respond and communicate on a deeper level than usual. There is complexity there too though, but it's buried in the sound and only reveals itself gradually like in the delicate dance of harmonics you can hear in a single harmonium note, or the way a single note from a guitar decays downward through it's harmonic spectrum as it dies away. Deep complexities buried in and arising from simplicity, like listening to the effect of Lorenz's butterfly as opposed to the ultimately Newtonian complexities of larger groups. I'm not saying the deep stuff isn't there with a big band, it's just a lot harder to get to, and right now, that's what I want from music. The core, the substance, the stuff, the SOUND.