Swiss saxophonist Christian Kobi is a supremely focused improviser and no surprise, perhaps, to find him associating with a group of extemporisers from Japan, a nation with a very honed ear for musical ritual. Kobi contributes four unaccompanied improvisations which bookend his meeting with three Tokyo improvisers, including guitarist Taku Sugimoto, renowned for his pared-down economy of gesture and note. This CD sits uneasily, arguably, in a magazine concerned with jazz. Kobi’s solo pieces are more like moving sound sculptures, swaying not swinging. Kneading and shaping the harmonic partials emanating from a single pitch, which gets devoured in the process, is the point, and the processes as they unfold are very beautiful to follow. The quartet piece, almost 20 minutes long, furthers that obsession over a longer duration and with an extended instrumental palette – and the delicacy and fragility of harmonics and softly bowed notes leave you fearing that the whole thing might topple at any moment.