It’s hardly the first time this live set, recorded across three nights and in three different cities – New York, Quebec and Montreal – in late 1979, has seen the light of day. First put out as a double LP, nearly 40 years on it’s now been ‘Mastered in High Definition’ for this CD release on BGO. The music’s as good as it ever was – which is to say, very good indeed – and the new liner notes help to bring the Oregon story up to date. It was the quartet’s last release on Elektra, prior to their move to what many considered their natural home, ECM, and their penultimate with Collin Walcott, who died in a car crash in 1984. As a sitar and tabla player (among many other things), Walcott was a vanguard no-musical-boundaries jazzer; the distinctiveness of his contributions here on the likes of ‘Deep Path’ remains undiminished by the passing of the years. A particular highpoint is the improvised opener ‘Buzzbox’, seemingly named for an insecticide can converted by Walcott into a sort of thumb piano; an astonishing amalgam of sources and inspirations, it’s both intensely serious and quirkily entertaining.