Tim Berne is on record as stating that his Snakeoil ensemble is a band that loves to rehearse. And, boy, does it show on this follow up to their eponymous 2012 debut. On pieces like ‘Static’ and ‘OC/DC’, his dense and complex themes are compressed into almost neurotically tight bursts, negotiated with a jumpy, hypersensitive alertness by a strictly drilled squad. You can virtually smell the concentration. And, while it's becoming more and more of a cliché for jazz musicians to talk about blurring the lines between composition and improvisation, there are few doing it with as much élan as Berne and his collaborators: hear how seemingly nonchalant gestures from pianist Matt Mitchell blossom into slowly self-revealing thematic structures; or how percussionist Ches Smith's tinkering on an expanded palette of gongs, woodblocks and congas provides a timbral bridge from freefalling energy to calm statement. Oscar Noriega's clarinets uncoil like heavily spiced incense smoke throughout, while Berne himself provides the album's most gripping moments, launching into powerfully intense solos that are somehow playful and as serious as your life at the exact same moment.