Recorded six years apart, here's Joe McPhee in two radically different performance situations. With French saxophonist André Jaume he reinvents compositions by Charles Mingus, Thelonious Monk and Ornette Coleman, alongside chunks of Ellingtonia and two originals, in a set originally recorded for HatHut, but never released (big mistake!) where every note is made to count. The duo with French guitarist Raymond Boni is hardcore free improv, a deliriously wonderful stream-of-consciousness stretching over 60-minutes where notes count too, but are picked up by electronics and transformed in real-time. Mingus' ‘Pithecanthropus Erectus’ and ‘Self-Portrait In Three Colours’ are harmonically detailed and timbrally specific compositions and the idea of a re-rendering by two saxophonists might seem implausible, but McPhee and Jaume effortlessly carry the harmonic weight and shifts in perspective. Monk's ‘Evidence’ and ‘Blue Monk’ are put under the surgeon's knife – opened up, dissected, internal parts rewired – while Ornette's ‘Lonely Woman’ and Ellington's ‘Come Sunday’ are pure soul. McPhee's duo with Raymond Boni also links to the tradition. The famous words, like modern jazz's own Gettysburg Address, that Eric Dolphy intoned at the end of Last Date are worked into the structure of the improvisation, McPhee's straight rendition soon floated by effects pedals towards the margins of abstraction where “it's gone in the air”.