Mark Dresser is a leading double bassist in avant garde circles, notably as a member of Anthony Braxton’s classic quartet in the 1980-90s and alongside such New York experimental urban jazz icons as John Zorn and Tim Berne. As a leader he is well known for performing solo regularly, while his own recordings tend to play second fiddle to his achievements as a sideman. The music on this new album, released on the dedicated Lisbon-based label Clean Feed, is a combination of the intricate New Music type of compositional processes that are a signature of his mentor Braxton, with Dresser tending to focus on reversing the more familiar relationships between musical elements, especially as regards temporal aspects and in his experiments with polyrhythms and meter. But for all its structural complexity, Dresser’s album leans more towards a raw ensemble jazz spirit that has a straighter historical lineage. For all its experimental fervour, Nourishments retains a loose-limbed and intuitive rhythmic feel. It’s captured well by the hip contemporary Rudresh Mahanthappa’s buzzily intense soaring alto sax, regular collaborator Denman Maroney’s haunting prepared piano-based range of sonics that he has called the ‘hyperpiano’ and the ever-inventive drummer Tom Rainey.