Tangled Goodbye is the result of a residency held by percussionist Bex Burch at Cafe OTO in 2022, where she was joined by fellow experimentalists Evelyn Glennie, John Edwards and Owen Gardner. It’s an example of a special line-up which needs no repeating, because the spontaneity and quick communication of a single performance is what makes it special.

There are five tracks, taken and edited from the longer set, each with their own character. The title track goes from moody, drone-like guitar to scuffling percussion, never quite settling. ‘Liquid Image’ is mostly atemporal, like the rest of the album, but at one point Edwards leads the group into a pulsing, collective riff, which quickly develops into a frenzied exchange of ideas. The bassist’s tone is menacing, especially as he focuses on the more reverberant, lower registers - similarly jarring vibrations are heard in penultimate track ‘Nervous Attraction’.

While it’s not always clear when and exactly what Glennie and Burch are playing, both being marimba-players with a percussion credit, it sounds like they have an artillery of tools, but more likely, they are exploring the limits of the material with the boundless creativity that they possess.