Night falls in the New York underground, as Sonic Youth founder Ranaldo and offbeat filmmaker Jarmusch attend a nocturnal studio summit with veteran Zorn bassist Urselli and Pándi (a former thrash-metal, now fine avant-jazz/rock drummer). The bankrupt, heat-stinking downtown Ranaldo and Jarmusch once knew is history now, maybe lost when 9/11's ash mummified Sonic Youth's studio and Mayor Giuliani scrubbed the stricken streets safe for gentrification. This live improv session, organised by Urselli to match-make four like-minded musical strangers, anyway emphasises the 1960s roots of Ranaldo's aesthetic. He and Jarmusch both fall at the punk ethos's gentle hippie end, idealising Neil Young and the Dead as much as the Dead Boys. This album's 19-minute centrepiece, ‘Groa’, accordingly unfolds pastoral psychedelia airlifted from The Doors' Californian ritual interludes. Ranaldo rings surprisingly emphatic variations from bells in the midst of its rolling, languid expanse. The slow-burn, unrealised expectation that someone will finally leap into roaring orbit is encouraged by Pándi's artful pawing of the ground, just as his earlier cymbal-work gave ‘Bergelmir’ jittery structure. ‘Andvari’ sees a guitar phrase leap piercingly from the mix like a 3-D B-movie dagger, and conversing guitars dominated by Mogadon, sludge-rock riffs before evaporating, as if the tape dematerialised. We get a hint of where to when ‘Haar’ fades into a slow outer-space swirl, and another from its Eastern spiritual chants. The whole night is defined by a Zen refusal to climax, a constant, calm suspension. Feedback squalls and rolling drum thunder no longer transmit teenage rage, instead giving edge and grit to meditative waves.