Verdi’s —opera Otello contains one of the greatest bass lines in the classical repertoire, which sounds out in the fourth act as the Moor declares his intention of killing his wife, Desdemona. Freiburg-based bassist Dieter Ilg has been using it as part of his daily practice routine for most of his career, so it’s perhaps unsurprising that he should have ended up creating this series of variations on Verdi’s great work. The work has been recorded before by the same trio, but this live recording has introduced new arrangements of some arias. There’s brooding groove a-plenty on the likes of ‘Fuoco di gioia’ while ‘Ave Maria’ demonstrates the trio’s more pensive propensities. But ‘Jago’ is the suite’s centrepiece: beginning with a lengthy solo from Ilg, it develops a stately, spacious midsection before French drummer Patrice Heral puts extra heat under the beat and then starts to scat, the use of electronic distortion then takes us (briefl y) into Slayer/Aphex Twin vocal territory.