Several of Ornette Coleman's muchloved themes (‘The Sphinx’; ‘Beauty Is A Rare Thing;’ ‘Folk Tale’) dot a 15-song set that is otherwise made up of originals, and for the most part, the use of those iconic melodies proves to be a bit a double edged sword. The album has a degree of continuity but the new music, much of which is by Petrowsky, all too often suffers in comparison. Although the reeds player has a knack for pithy themes, they are not developed with sufficient imagination to hold the interest and the group interplay is too stilted to really hit the mark. The idea of using a wordless voice in conjunction with horn and guitar is interesting but Bruning lacks the necessary timbral richness and variety of attack to make her presence felt, and the net result is that the arrangements, despite some astute shifts from sotto to fortissimo, swing time to no time, are too monochromatic for their owngood. The manic, scatter-gun riffing that strafes ‘8758/Das Ding’, which moves organically from a grandly offkey march to a funereal, vaguely north African lament, is one of the best pieces on offer, and shows what the group is capable of when focused.