Four years on from Cosmic Lieder, Shipp and Jones reprise the title but add a new heading to suggest a development of the original premise. Indeed the deep empathy binding the two musicians as well as the notion of poetic song are still paramount, but the conceptual and stylistic ambition of the music have greatly increased. Whereas the previous effort was largely a triumphant exercise in economy where each piece was a focused fragment in a larger song cycle here each composition is practically a suite in miniature with the shifts not so much in harmony or rhythm but mood and landscape being as audacious as one might expect. At times there is a bold economy that recalls Abbey Lincoln and Hank Jones' great 1992 meeting Where There Is Love insofar as every melodic line has the impact of one of the singer's uncompromisingly wry observations on life and love. Jones' weighty, slow moving alto spirals are all the more effective for the way single notes are drawn and stretched languorously over the rolling, tumbling subverted blues piano that has become one of Shipp's trademarks. Lyrical as the two men are it is practically in their musical DNA to throw curveballs, and a memorable example is the album's highlight ‘Lord Of Woe’. The piece starts as prickly ballad, settles into a sweet lament, breaks and reforms, launches into a jolting march and then snowballs into a storm of the most agitated rhythm, which climaxes with withering trills from both horn and keyboard. This is the Shipp-Jones duo at its apex, combining emotional intensity with technical ingenuity, channeling the big sound of each player into structures that highlight their razor sharp reflexes. Sombre if not disturbing, The Darkseid Recital is also storytelling of visceral, uncompromising power.