If this were on TV it would be a drama not a soap or if a novel would be an epic, not a celebrity memoir. In its drama it does not take any short cuts or rely on cameo roles. In its script it has an intensity to it and characterisation certainly provided by all and significantly at times the wailing alto saxophone of Chad Fowler. The key interest however fundamentally within the collective ethos is Brian Blade's presence given his ability to lift any musical situation whatever the style and inject both power and a sort of poetry of his own. The Bond goes free several minutes into the long title track and yet when trumpeter Marc Franklin takes up the running it step changes again, Blade instead presents his own freeness via cascading passages propped by the detonating piano part of Christopher Parker. You don't really expect vocals when you begin to listen, Kelley Hurt's have a fracturing operatic quality and that works especially given the bass lines William Parker delivers beneath her exploratory, simmering trajectory. 'The Emergence' is even longer led off by blistering saxophone and it's even more direct. Scrabbling and very abstract Blade again is interesting. He sounds very different here to the way he plays for instance with Wayne Shorter but yet his open panoramic vision is always a factor within. There's quite a lot of anarchy in the sax and trumpet-playing sections underlaid by piano and that latter relative serenity makes the drama of the contrasts piquant. A stillness is again a factor from the piano in a solo section at the beginning of 'The Release' but we are left guessing where it eventually will go. And that is only part of the deep appeal of a group whose music you have to hear right now. SG. Out on Mahakala Music. Dopolarians, photo: Bandcamp