A double CD set from the experimental Blink, a sax-piano-drums trio that specialises in keeping you guessing as to what they're about to do next. Blink has the same imagination-comesbefore-style message of the Loop Collective, of which the young pianist Alcyona Mick and Outhouse tenor saxophonist/clarinettist Robin Fincker are both founder members. The highly acclaimed, versatile drummerpercussionist Paul Clarvis is the senior member of Blink whose background includes success in the film, classical and rock music fields. But Clarvis is a jazz musician at heart and one of the points of Blink membership you feel is in the challenge of taking things out of your own comfort zone. Twice is a two-disc set containing a studio session (a follow up to the eponymous debut in 2008 recorded for the Loop recording offshoot) plus a CD live at the Vortex in which they hook up with the acclaimed experimental Parisian cellist Vincent Courtois. With nine tracks written by Mick and Clarvis (aside from Steve Lacy's ‘Image’), and no bass in the band, for the more uptempo tracks Mick holds the low end down with a series of grungy avant-downtown acoustic piano vamps, for example on the opener ‘Mummy's Boy’, and echoes Paul Bley in her subsequent assured soloing. Some tracks have a more yearning feel about them, with French reedsman Robin Fincker's clarinet evoking fellow countrymen Milhaud and Poulenc's dreamy, impressionist chamber music as well as a kind of playful old world swing, while he's more indirect and edgier on the sax, somewhere between New York tenors Chris Speed and Ellery Eskelin. On the bonus CD Blink perform live at the Vortex in 2010 alongside the French cellist Vincent Courtois. Although it's also based on compositions by Mick and Fincker, CD-2 has a more open-ended, less structured feel about it than the first with Courtois bringing a subtly elegant minimalism to the table. It makes for an interesting contrast.