Drummer Nasheet Waits makes his presence felt pretty quickly with the energy he brings to the sound like a lively crackle and pop behind the horns on opener 'Metalurgic'. Led by Slovenian tenorist Jure Pukl with Waits' fellow American trumpeter Peter Evans in the front line with him, the ensemble completed by another US player bassist Joe Sanders (hear him best on 'Let It Go'), the improvisation from Pukl quickly enters deep waters on the opener, chorus upon chorus of knotty drama as he runs the sax through its paces. While the whole thing is often shaped around the interplay between sax and trumpet and uses a modernistic freebop as its main language the beat and groove Waits and Sanders wrap that relationship in gives what everyone produces space and variety. Quite tense at times with tunes that are often serious but tender too and demand close listening it's the best yet we've heard from the prodigiously talented Pukl who is already something of a fixture on Whirlwind. Recorded in Slovenia last year if you purchase the album you get an electronica reworking of the album as a bonus which takes the sound into another dimension entirely.
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