ABBC - tête à tête (2001)

One of the best kept secrets of Calexico's discography, this collaboration between them and the Amor Belhom Duo finds them at their most eerie, fatalist and mystical, with several short Ambient-Chamber tracks which give new guise to their cursed desert auras, and approach the abstract requiems of the Boxhead Ensemble ("La Valse Des 24 Heures", "En Route To The Blanchisserie", "Orange Trees In The Yard"). Funnily, the nadir is the pointless doodling of what one would expect to be the centerpiece (the 14-minute "The Wrestler's Masque"), while the zenith is the 11-minute pointillism of "Le Savon Se Dissout Dans La Rigole" (despite an awkward and irrelevant coda). Get it here (updated link).