As Joe Morris says in his sleeve note, saxophonist Noah Kaplan did indeed “get a lot” from his studies with Joe Maneri – the saxophonist who listened hard and integrated microtonality at a subterranean level inside his concept of improvisation – but where Maneri's lines brazenly liberated themselves from the physics and contours of the conventional 12-note scale to speak a new language, Kaplan's tendency towards microtonal inflection as embellishment wears thin. A 10-minute ‘Body and Soul’ feels interminable and listless because, unlike Maneri, Kaplan generates a reading of what he calls “the tenor saxophone song” that sounds contrived and operatic in its degree of stylisation; microtones suffocate the line rather than yanking open its pores to discover previously unheard possibilities of rhythm and structure. I found Kaplan's take on the blues, ‘Virago’, similarly laboured and constipated – the relief when Joe Morris' lithe and blithe guitar suddenly takes the solo lead is palpable – and I remain mightily puzzled by blasts of electronica from the general direction of drummer Jason Nazary that puncture the otherwise serene surface of the slowly evolving ‘Entzauberung’. Cluster Swerve was, apparently, inspired by the swerving movements that atoms make as they fall – which is a nice concept. But this is an uncertain statement, trapped somewhere between sound musical deportment and looks-good-on-paper theorising. The atom has yet to be split.