Though still beloved as co-founder of original anarchist punk unit Crass, Penny Rimbaud has, for the last 20 years, been active as a performance poet with a penchant for collaborating with jazz musicians. Here, he enlists the help of improv heavyweights Evan Parker and Ingrid Laubrock, plus classically-trained Louise Elliott – all on tenor – to provide a serpentine, stream of consciousness musical setting to his energetic spoken delivery. Rimbaud imagines his namesake, French Symbolist poet and rascal Arthur Rimbaud (who died in 1891) plunged into the horrors of the First World War battle of Verdun (which took place in 1916). Cue plenty of lip-smacking descriptions of ‘spumey gore’, ‘oozy sludge’ and the ‘mangled mash of metal and mud.’ From there, Rimbaud makes associative leaps that seem to flip through the centuries, conflating Beat cool with trench warfare, 21st century political anger with 19th century Bohemianism. At times the poetry veers a little too close to poetry-slam rhyming to pack any radical artistic punch, but the project undeniably has a certain quixotic charm.