Chicago reeds flamethrower Ken Vandermark can be a fearsomely uncompromising free-improviser, but his resourcefulness as a comparably powerful composer both draws on improv for syntax and vocabulary, and stings it into unexpected directions. The accomplished VWCR quartet resulted from a Vandermark residency at New York's The Stone in 2016 – he met trumpeter Nate Wooley, Swiss-born pianist Sylvie Courvoisier and drummer Tom Rainey there, and the following year they recorded this diverse studio session comprising three pieces each from Vandermark, Courvoisier and Wooley. There's plenty of flinty, squalling, no-holdsbarred free-jamming, but fascinating compositional invitations, challenges and conundrums too – and the moods compellingly shift from scalding energy to almost motionless contemplation. Courvoisier's tracklist opener ‘Checkpoint’ has a fitfully Monkish rhythmic feel behind the saxophonist's Ayler-like outbursts and Wooley's flares of high-register sound, while Vandermark's ‘Track And Field’ contrastingly swells from a long, see-sawing trumpet exhalation eventually interwoven with the sax. Wooley's ‘The Space Between The Teeth' is an exploration of intensity and space in which purring long tones and silences are badgered by surges of onrushing ensemble sound, Vandermark's exclamatory ‘Tag’ is a hit-and-run chase that draws Cecil Taylor-esque tsunamis from Courvoisier, while the muted trumpet and soft tenor sighs on his closing ‘Simple Cut’ nod appreciatively toward the cool school. Jazz's cutting edge stays sharp with artists like these honing it.