This recording captures intimate performances from 2005 and 2006, bringing together two of alternative music's most influential eccentrics. Smith recites passages from her 1996 book of the same name, a touching elegy to late friend and photographer Robert Mapplethorpe. "The sun and sea, as a courtesy, commingle," she says in “Performance I.” My Bloody Valentine’s Kevin Shields effectively plays the role of the sea, gathering woozy guitar effects that serenely ripple underneath Smith's commanding voice, giving her natural sense of rhythm a haunting power.