This double album retrospective of Steve Tibbetts’s work for ECM is not so much a ‘Best Of’ as a ‘Best Steve Could Do’, according to the Madison, Wisconsin-born guitarist himself. That doesn’t mean this doesn’t represent a fine sample of his unique recordings but Tibbetts applied the criterion of songs needing to fit together strictly.

“I played the ending of every song with the beginning of every other song until a plot started to reveal itself,” he explains, coming to the conclusion that “some compositions don’t prosper well outside of their own habitat”. Hence there’s nothing from Yr, and ‘mid-period Tibbetts’ largely dominates. And it sounds great, with key elements present and correct: acoustic 12-string, distorted electric guitar (making a sound ‘like sheet metal being torn to pieces’), drones, tabla, a vast array of instrumentation and, of course, someone playing a vase. If you don’t know Tibbetts’ music, the title track, with its wild, shifting percussion, is a great place to start.