“How unseemly it is to follow anyone slavishly,” is ECM's press release's free (one suspects) translation for the title track. Performing Muhlis Akarsu's ‘Kula Kulluk Yakisir Mi’ therefore could be perceived as a pointed choice. The baglama – the long-necked lute or saz anglicised as baglama – player and vocalist died in a firebombing in 1993 aged 45 or so. He belonged to the Alevîlik (Alevi) sect. Within Islam, Alevism is seen as a Turkishslash Turkish-diaspora-based Shia sect retaining Sufi colourings. Furthermore, it espouses poetry, music and dance.

As sometimes occurs with ECM releases in my specific areas of expertise or experience, this album misses the trick of failing to contextualise such magnificent music. Exhibit 1 for the prosecution is the lack of information about the four-section medley of ‘traditionals’ called ‘Intertwining Melodies’, given that the musicians are Iranian (Kalhor) and Anatolian (Erzincan). Further suspicions might be fed by ECM's slavish art-direction house style. It extols image over text and here ignores a deliberate cultural positioning. And on the sleeve is a monochrome Bosporus (by photographer Ara Güler) in full art-direction conformity. Here design does a disservice to remarkable improvised music. This duo's drawing attention to what many Muslims would perceive as unorthodoxy is a testimony of their musical nonconformity and philosophical surefootedness. Captured live by Emre Teke at Bursa Uyur Mumcu Sahnesi, what these two musicians achieve on their joint flight paths of the kemancheh spike fiddle and baglama, with the rise and fall of the melodic lines, is nothing short of stupendous.