According to Fowler, a specialist on the relatively rare saxello, there was very little discussion between himself and pianist Shipp prior to recording this unscripted session that is an unlikely event on paper.

The former has roots in Memphis R&B and the latter is one of the tallest trees grown from the soil of the New York avant-garde, yet together they create the kind of musical landscape that reminds us of the historical cross-fertilisation of these apparently unrelated territories.

The shrieks and honks synonymous with the feted ‘energy’ horn players are nothing if not buried deep in the blues while the keyboard was never exclusively a vehicle for outré improvisation among so-called ‘free’ artists. There was subtlety too. Shipp does some of his most allusive and tender playing here, perhaps as a response to the more economic, at times drilled-down style of his partner, who chooses his moments of attack with great care, maybe as a means of maximising his own expressive ability in a stimulating encounter.

Then again, Fowler can also blow up a storm when he lets loose on the straight alto or stritch, associated first and foremost with Rahsaan Roland Kirk. The result is music that holds the attention for the sense of bond between the two players on an ever-shifting landscape, full of clenched micro-rhythms and heated, hazy melodies that amount to a kind of barbed romanticism, or songs that unsettle as much as they soothe.

Shipp was warming up in the studio by playing Ellington before this session, and, funnily enough, the Duke in Money Jungle mode with Julius Hemphill in place of drums and bass might be an unwitting foreword to Old Stories.