Description
Each member brings out new facets of the others – Parker’s melodicism warms up Rempis’ tone and invites a new focus on contrapuntal motion in his playing, while Rempis draws some spiky shards of sound from Parker’s otherwise round-toned ax. Flaten’s drive propels Cunningham, and frees him up to play more impressionistically than he otherwise might. And Cunningham – who’s been known to fret that he’s a nail-biting novice to free improvisation – proves himself fully capable of taking on that new challenge using the same remarkable depth of musicality that he applies in more familiar contexts. Put these together and you end up with a record that draws lines between Grant Green’s Iron City, Ornette Coleman’s Body Meta, and Sonny Sharrock’s Ask the Ages.