Though he originally came out the 1980s jazz scene on the US West Coast, guitarist Nels Cline has also been a major figure in American avant-rock, collaborating with Thurston Moore and the band Wilco, among others. It's no surprise then, to find him creating music that dodges expectations, while making a cogent argument for a highly personal form of 21st century fusion. To be sure, Cline has got chops. On tracks like ‘Companion Piece’, he engages in the kind of burning, hyper-dextrous fretwork that would give Scorch Trio's Raoul Bjorkenheim a run for his money. But his imaginative use of pedals and loops enables him to access some much less familiar territory. ‘The Wedding Band’ layers strange swoops, smudges and backwards effects over a propulsive percussive undertow to build a kind of nightmare noirprog while, on ‘Macroscopic’, he scrawls odd acoustic shapes and an absent-minded, slightly offkilter vocal mumble over tinkling, subliminal pings.