The 62-year-old progressive alto saxophonist-composer Tim Berne's Snakeoil's fourth CD for the ECM label is the follow-up to 2015's You've Been Watching Me which saw Berne expand the current personnel to include guitarist Ryan Ferreira. That was a smart move: as with the more trenchant axeman Marc Ducret's interventions in Berne's music, Ferreira adds value. His rugged electric textures and eerily cinematic ambience (David Torn steps in on two tracks with more emphasis on the latter) is a positive addition to Berne's densely whirling collective soundworld, which nonetheless somehow retains the deep sonic space we expect to hear on an ECM production – Torn is right on the money here as he was on the previous pair of Snakeoil releases. On Incidentals Berne further develops an episodic compositional structure for pieces that are boiling over with tension. Negotiating between experimental downtown street-fighting improv and avant-garde chamber music, there can't be too many others blurring the line between composed and unwritten music quite as vigorously as Snakeoil right now.