Tenorman David Murray has a rich history of collaborating with African American poets, including recordings with Amiri Baraka and Ishmael Reed. Here, he teams up with poet, actor and spoken word artist Saul Williams, offering up a suite of tunes mostly based on Williams’ acerbic observations on the realities of life in 21st century America. Right from the start there’s a curious dynamic at play, with Murray’s rich, warm tone that owes so much to Coleman Hawkins and Ben Webster chafing against Williams’ coolly snarled proclamations. Opening track, ‘Hush,’ is a perfect example: an insouciant waltz jerked awake by Williams’ litany of surreal ‘Wanted’ ads, with the casually spat line: “Young nigger seeks truth” triggering a cramped piano solo from Orrin Evans. That said, Murray’s perfectly prepared to spiral into tightly coiled altissimo when the mood calls for it and, on ‘Citizens,’ he wields a dusky bass clarinet that drops deep into a slinky groove, with his son, Mingus Murray, adding flashes of funk-heavy electric guitar. The album highlight, however, has to be the instrumental title-track – a crawling blues lament with Turkish virtuoso Aytaç Doğan adding melancholy licks on the traditional, zither-like kanun.