Myra Melford and Allison Miller have a history together. Melford may seem to have the more heavyweight avant-garde credentials – study with Jaki Byard and Don Pullen, recording with Henry Threadgill, Leroy Jenkins, Marty Ehrlich and Hans Bennink, and a mantelpiece-full of honours, awards and fellowships including a Guggenheim – while Miller's discography includes the more accessible likes of Natalie Merchant and Brandi Carlisle.

But their series of recordings together under various guises shows that they are supremely compatible musicians, both equally able to command the space between tightly plotted complexity and gestural freedom, with Melford's awesome chops alternately grounded and lifted aloft by Miller's superbly inventive drumming. Lux Quartet is their first jointly-led project (Melford has contributed to several iterations of Miller's highly rated Boom Tic Boom band) and they’ve called in another pair of simpatico freebop-friendly heavyweights to complete the classic horn-plus-rhythm quartet format.

Proceedings commence straight in the deep end with the intricate odd-metre atonality of ‘Intricate Drift’ allowing the band to display their complete command of the contemporary idiom: ’23 Januarys’ underpins the same atonality with a woozy swing feel reminiscent of early 1970s Braxton; and the aptly-named ‘The Wayward Line’ is a powerfully committed exercise in total freedom. But the leaders are just as likely to head in the opposite direction, so that ‘Congratulations And Condolences’ gives us a slice of uptempo minor-modal swing; 'speak Eddie’ supplies a quirkily swaggering backing to Melford's most Geri Allenesque solo; and the title track is a hushed, contemplative ballad that builds to a dramatic climax. Stephens’ tone on both alto and soprano is at once sharp and full-bodied, Colley is simply a monster, and the two leaders sound utterly committed throughout. High level music making.