David S. Ware has entered a restless phase of his career, as witness the swerves since he and Columbia's bean-counters parted ways: the experiment with synths on Corridors and Parallels was followed by his album-length gloss on Sonny Rollins' Freedom Suite. Threads marks yet another change of direction: Ware's role on the disc is largely as a composer and arranger, though he also plays tenor on one ensemble track and on two brief tenor/drum improvs, "Weave I" and "II." He calls this augmented version of his quartet the "String Ensemble": newcomers Daniel Bernard Roumain (on violin) and Mat Maneri (on viola) mesh with bassist William Parker and on several tracks with the synthesized strings of Matt Shipp. The title track is a through-composed piece for this string quartet alone; on the other pieces the band is completed by drummer Guillermo E. Brown. All told, Threads counts as one of Ware's strangest, most exploratory and unexpected albums.

It's also a complete turkey. "Uneven" would be the politest word for it. There are a number of quite decent moments, which end up seeming like towering peaks next to the deep and generously proportioned troughs that surround them. Perhaps the best way to survey the territory is to deal with the six tracks on the disc in ascending order of length, which maps closely to a list in descending order of merit:

• "Weave I" and "II," each 3 minutes long. These are essentially punctuation marks in the programming, the first marking the disc's halfway point, the second serving as a coda. Brown is widely maligned among Ware fans, but actually his unfettered, falling-over-itself drumming is quite effective in this classic free-jazz format; Ware certainly seems quite game.

So here's the brutal math: 45 minutes, 6 tracks, of which at least half is completely useless - which isn't to vouch too strenuously for the merits of the other half. The production is very obtrusive - themix is completely different for every track, and often surreally skewed (on "Ananda Rotations" Ware and Brown sound like they're in another room) - which is just about the last thing the disc needs: it's already inconsistent enough, and such fussy touches aren't going to make up for the album's many woes. For Ware completists only.