This fine recording from 2015's Molde International Jazz Festival offers an increasingly rare opportunity to hear new James Blood Ulmer on disc. Those who've cupped earfuls of him during recent live shows might be expecting more of his stripped back hoodoo-blues but, while there remain residual echoes of that style on Baby Talk, this heavyweight hook-up with The Thing pushes his playing way beyond the music of his South Carolina upbringing. Blood's guitar, tugging at cracked quotes from his own Birthright, cajoled by his mightily poised pick-up band, acts the imperious imp, noodling rapid-fire nursery-rhymes, muddying the crossroads myth with a trickster's swagger. More meditative sections recall Hisato Higuchi parsing a clearing in one of Akira Kurosawa's cinematic forests. With a hotwired trio of simpatico honchos lending their concentrated beef to its breakouts, Baby Talk is strangely user-friendly, showcasing an almost courteous conversational back-and-forth between Blood and sax-master Gustafsson, underpinned by centred extemporisations from one of the best bass-and-drums combos working in free improv today.