Formed in the early 1990s, Parker's In Order To Survive can stake a rightful claim to be one of the defining small groups of the recent history of black music. The core unit – double-bassist Parker, alto-saxophonist Rob Brown and pianist Cooper-Moore – has remained unchanged as various drummers have joined the fold, and the current incumbent Hamid Drake is certainly a force to be reckoned with. His advanced interplay with Parker, and the other players for that matter, brings an invaluable cohesion as well as fierce momentum to the ensemble sound. Yet, for all the peaks of energy in this performance at the renowned Shapeshifter Lab in Brooklyn, there are many moments of serenity in which the careful restraint of the players comes into its own, above all when Parker plays shakuhachi flute. Then again the real beauty of IOTS is a versatility which enables it to process instantly through different musical territories in a manner not unrelated to AEC's credo of ‘Great Black Music: ancient to future’. Parker's shifts from hard swing to taut groove, as well as his innate blues sensibility, greatly facilitates this, as can be heard on the epic and engrossing opener ‘Entrance To The Tone World’, a suite in which movements and interludes cover such a great amount of idiomatic ground so as to make change a constant guiding principle. A hard-hitting shuffle or a fleeting implication of reggae is always good to hear, but it's even more satisfying when it comes off the back of the kind of high stakes interactivity Parker has favoured for many years. Seasoned fans will delight in this music that is well mixed by Adam Vaccarelli, while any newcomers may well trawl the band's back catalogue if they like what they hear.