After accumulating a series of excellent albums with bassist Steve Swallow, Saft and Previte ring the changes with the introduction of guitarist Nels Cline. The result is a curate’s egg of an album – good in parts – but not wholly satisfying. And while this claim could be made of countless albums, the bar had been set high by their previous work with Steve Swallow, so expectation is naturally inflated. Where this album seems to lose focus is during the noise/ abstractive elements created by Cline that dissipates the essential sense of momentum needed in a recorded jazz performance – noise is an element that often works very successfully in a live situation, but does not take to bottling so readily. Without the visual correlation of performance and the audience’s engagement with the creative process, recorded noise/abstraction, unless well managed, can quickly test attention spans, as audiences variously scratch their armpits and think about going down to the pub as minds begin to wander – the kiss of death for any recording. Where the recording scores is the mutual empathy between Previte and Saft, but too often this is dissipated by Cline. Overlong and baggy, it’s a bit self-indulgent too.