This is not your typical Geoff Eales disc. Not that Eales has ever been particularly easy to pigeonhole: Master of the Game was classic European piano trio music; Shifting Sands was full-on quintet/sextet fusion; The Dancing Flute, released only a few months ago, was a flavoursome globe-trotting piano-flute duet disc. But this is his first live improvised recording, and it’s so avant-garde that 33 Records have had to set up a new label specially to release it. Well, even if that’s not quite true, the recording has been chosen to inaugurate the new 33 Xtreme imprint which is dedicated to cutting-edge work, and the music on offer here certainly is adventurous. It was recorded across two nights, separated by eight months, at Dempsey’s in Cardiff, and all sound was captured on a single microphone. As you might expect, no one’s self-editing here: the shortest piece, ‘Sprite’, clocks in at 10 minutes, while the opener, ‘Conflict and Resolution’, stretches to over 17 minutes. ‘On the Seventh Day’ begins with what sounds like a deconstruction of ‘Take Five’ by Eales and bassist Ashley John Long, before Ben Waghorn carries the motif upwards and outwards, skillfully transmuting the initial boppish energy into something more impressionistically spacious. And this is only the beginning of a musical journey that continues, with breathless invention, for another 13 or so minutes. It’s exciting music making on the hoof.