Blimey. Talk about expressing yourself without giving a shit about what anyone thinks! This free-spirited, uninhibited and at times positively wild collaboration at first intimidates with its heat, its unpredictability and what seem like deliberate attempts to alienate, but slowly draws you in to what is a fascinating and, at times, a rather beautiful sound world.

The 10 pieces here veer from the serene to the frantic, from wispy to black hole-dense, from the frightening to the welcoming; but the music always manages to pull you in, aided by Sanchez’s piano shards and dazzling runs, and by Taylor’s polyrhythmic pulse (‘Myopic Seer, ‘Threadwork’) which also provides texture (as with his cymbal work on the opener, ‘Liminal’). ‘Animistic’ sees Sanchez’s piano piercing the air around it like shattering glass or a screaming banshee, while her keyboard work on ‘Alluvial’, appropriately enough, flows like a river through ever-changing landscapes: sometimes lazily meandering, then forceful like rapids before a waterfall. Her playing on ‘Tracers of Cosmic Space’ is delicate and ethereal, like a harp, and while she relishes dissonance (‘All Alone Together’, the title track) and is defiantly in the avant-garde, there are often clever and subtle references to jazz’s roots in the blues and ragtime.

A Monster… is an album that draws the listener in far more than most avant-garde jazz waxings and more than that, is a tribute to the remarkable creative telepathy between two first-rank musicians.