The Kreuzau, North Rhine-Westphalia-based CMP label played an important role in the career of Trilok Gurtu, a musician with exemplary credentials and a track record to beguile and bewilder. This double set remasters CMP's Bad Habits Die Hard (1995) and, with the recently deceased Don Cherry as its guiding presence, The Glimpse (1996). The first, recorded live at Cologne's Stadtgarten in 1995, steers a generously experimental course, lobbing out surprises as it goes. It starts out sailing as if into jazz-rock/fusion seas with the chop-rhythm ‘21 Spices’. The mood of this Gurtu/Emler original is reminiscent of the bluster territory occupied by the Mahavishnu Orchestra. (Earlier Gurtu was a fixture in the John McLaughlin Trio.) By Habits’ seventh and last track, any possible early reservations have been dissipated and the project's integrity and living ginger soundly asserted. In Hindustani music bols are rhythmic syllables that are the essential mnemonic building blocks of percussion composition. (Konnakol is its Karnatic counterpart.) ‘Carlinhos’ includes a series of judiciously infiltrated bols-ish, humorous interjections. The Glimpse, formed in 1996, was an ensemble far more world music in orientation and their eponymous album delivers varied sonorities deliciously. Gurtu deploys the South Indian vina player Geetha Bennett magnificently on ‘Cherry Town’ – and elsewhere on konnakol and, as the spoken word narrator on Gurtu's ‘Glimpse’ itself. Paolo Fresu is a master of trumpet concision on this track. Adding a peek-a-boo extra to this expanded edition is a live recording of ‘Glimpse’ recorded seven-and-a-half years on. Half as long again, Radio Bremen captured it with a radically different sound palette in April 2008 at CCB (Congress Center Bremen). Carlo Cantini (vla, melodica, ky), Phil Drummy (sax, fl, didgeridoo), Roland Cabezaa (g) and Stefano Dell'Ora (b) transform the piece while retaining its melodic suppleness. It's the stuff of insight and comparison that makes bonus tracks so valuable. Next, a Collectors' Premium edition of Gurtu's Usfret (1988) and Living Magic (1991) please.