Earlier this year the brilliant Derby-based vibraphonist and experimental composer Corey Mwamba announced his retirement from live performance. I've been lucky enough to see Mwamba play several times – he's electrifying to watch – and I'm sad that I won't have the opportunity again. Fortunately, though, he's not disappearing altogether and plans to continue releasing recordings, such as this one, with the group who joined him for his last live outing. It's an album of extremes: seething and muscular one minute, ultra-delicate the next. Against All Known Things’ opens with the bass and drums sizing one another up. They range like caged animals, growing increasingly wild, as a luminous vibes and piano melody struggles to assert itself, and to ignore them. On ‘Orison’ Mwamba's vibes are so gentle and abstract it sounds like mice are scampering across the keys. ‘Situations’ is more conventional, with charging almost-swing, fluid improvisations over chord changes and a latin vamp, and ‘Over Leagues’ is an atmospheric highlight with a brooding bassline and a vibes solo full of exquisite tensions. In spite of his retirement from gigging, it sounds as though Mwamba still has ideas and energy to burn.