Reunited in the studio after their 2017 duo album Magic Circle, Newsome and Pilc started out on this project with no preconceived ideas about what they would play as they arrived in the studio.

The result is 15 tracks, of which four have some connection with standards from the jazz tradition. When they play completely freely, as in the opening ‘Sounds From My Morning Window’, with Keith Tippett-like chimes on the piano and some innovative effects on the soprano, they are at their best – the piece builds spontaneously from a starting point of gentle, almost accidental-sounding components.

Pilc is a stunningly accomplished pianist (his background accompanying both classical and popular stars attests to this), and his touch and facility are impressive and enviable. Newsome strives to balance the authentic sound of the soprano with devices to alter and extend its possibilities, including tube extensions to the body of the instrument.

The opening of the title track is impressive with a rapidly repeated figure that has occasional ‘dirty’ tones and resounding low notes embedded into the phrasing, as Pilc weaves in some inside piano answers.

The combined technical skill, imagination and close listening of the partnership makes their completely free work absorbing. This is not the case when they turn their attention to a standard, even if, as in the case of Jerome Kern’s ‘All The Things You Are’ it is played acoustically with almost no effects except some very extended soprano notes towards the end, produced by circular breathing. But the harmonies that Kern thoughtfully supplied are progressively ignored, until the entire structure of the piece is jettisoned, apart from odd quotations. The challenge for generations of jazz musicians has been to weave interesting variations on a harmonic structure, but in this case the baby is thrown out some time before the bathwater. The same is true of an unsettling and uncomfortable ‘Take the A Train’, but in contrast Pilc’s delicate solo version of Ellington’s ‘Solitude’ that closes the collection is both beautiful and intriguing, and his harmonic and pianistic interpolations make it worthy of repeated listening.