The term ‘skronk’ is usually applied these days to the sound of the saxophone used as an energy source in free jazz, but the word was originally coined in 1978 by critic Robert Christgau as an onomatopoeic description of the guitars in New York ‘No Wave’ groups such as DNA. How wonderfully fitting, then, that this session captures former DNA guitarist Arto Lindsay engaged in some bona fide energy music with some of the most dependable names in the business. Recorded in one day in a Chicago studio, it finds Lindsay engaging in various duos, trios and quartets with saxophonists and long-time sparring partners McPhee and Vandermark, plus drummer Sudderberg, who plays with Vandermark in the group Maker. Lindsay holds his own admirably – dealing in gnarled clumps, scrabbly filaments and odd, alien transmissions – and Sudderberg, too, is a fresh voice, rolling from ritualistic transmissions to itchy scratch-scratch. But once the horns get going, the date is never too far away from some fairly standard free-jazz free-for-all blowing.