A fitting homage to Albert Ayler, this performance reaches boiling point at an early stage. The combination of Wright's hearty, guttural cries, notes that he dispenses sparingly, and the much more loquacious, almost hyperactive approach of James Blood Ulmer is brilliant and gives the music both steadiness and agitation. The latter produces splintering, shattering chords whose rugged nature leans as much to blues pioneers such as Bo Diddley as it does to the jazz pyrotechnics of Charlie Christian and co, but Ulmer's maelstrom also suggests a weird Mingus-like take on Mexican street tunes as well as American improvised music. The result, in any case, is a great unbroken throb of sound in which the rhythm section, under Rashied Ali's iron grip, has a kind of ‘all time, no time’ feel. The quasi-constant, chattering rolls on the snare create a whirlpool for the other instruments to dip in and out of at will. As strong as the fluid rhythmic drive of the performance is, moments of magic occur when the sax or guitar let rip with their most impassioned melodic figures, no more so than on the many occasions when Ulmer adds a subtle vibrato effect to make his notes squeal across the barrage of drums and bass. A few years before he died Ali told me that “fusion killed the avant-garde,” but on the strength of this performance it is fair to say that the two genres were by no means mutually exclusive, and that the ability of ‘free’ players to rock, especially those who, like Ulmer, had their blues down pat, makes the exchange an entirely logical one.