This remarkable Czech winds-and-string strio's debut album lays a feast of a table of the unexpected before us. Hrubý's ‘Ach Kocoure Kocoure’/‘Oh Tomcat’ opens. After a koto, double-bass and clarinet prelude and melody sequence, it banana-slips into a sublime piece of cartoonish mischief-making. Highest praise, it summons the spirit of the American cartoon composer, Carl Stalling, whose name may ring few bells. His outrageous scores were the classic avant-garde musical ingredient and terra incognita of Looney Tunes and Merrie Melodies. (By comparison, Tom & Jerry composers Scott Bradley, Eugene Poddany, Steve Morrell, Vivek Maddala and Dan Blessinger just make fine functional soundtrack music.) The spirit and discipline of Stalling lives on in Hrubý's nigh seven-minute piece. The album closes with three improvised compositions called ‘Impro I’, ‘… II’ and ‘…III’ jointly credited to the trio. ‘Impro II’ summons the Slav spirit of Ornette Coleman, the way Dancing in Your Head-era Coleman floored me. ‘Improv III’ uses slivered koto brilliantly. Romanovská Tichý Hrubý is a Prime Time of a different kind. The interplay, sonorities and tonalities that these three musicians deploy in these six tales verge on the cinematic.