"If you like Albert Ayler's explosive improvisations from Spiritual Unity and Prophecy albums, Evan Parker from the seventies on eighties, Brötzmann bent under the percussive deluge of Han Bennink or Mats Gustafsson with Gush or Lovens, you will find here the ultimate piece of evidence. There is no "melodic" line, only articulations of frenzied sound, mouthpiece and reed bites, a destroying fire on breathing breath. Stefan Keune's style is akin to the vitriolic and explosive Evan Parker when he played in a duet with Paul Lytton or Derek Bailey or in a trio with Alex Schlippenbach and Paul Lovens or the extraordinary Michel Doneda on soprano sax.

After the first ten volcanic ten minutes of "Well Then" (26:48), an egalitarian dialogue takes place where the detailed sounds exploring the margins of the instrument create a kaleidoscopic vision of the musical flow. When a melodic form appears on the tenor sax, it becomes the pretext for doubling or tripling the licks on the mouthpiece and using "forked" fingerings which open the field to the multiplication of melodic fragments crushed and superimposed as if the column of d he boiling air was about to explode with a projection of high on pitched bursts and very short growls in the bass or midrange. We then think of the ethics of the Spontaneous Music Ensemble as documented by Face To Face with percussionist John Stevens and Trevor Watts on soprano sax. I am focusing on the description of the saxophonist because, even if this music is egalitarian and collective, it is indeed a tenor saxophone cum trio, whose expressive on expressionist peculiarities color and define their musical universe. Underlying this surge of pointillist sounds, high on pitched harmonics, jumps of registers, friction of timbre, exasperations of a surgical breath, we perceive complex harmonic constructions and intelligent variations of fingerings which make his improvisation captivating and keep you spellbound.

During the last fifteen minutes of "Well Then" and the beginning of "Whatsoever" (16:31), the trio builds renewed flows where each improviser is immersed in an intense mutual listening by exchanging and sharing their individual research of tones, movements and lines. / curves / points with a sense of openness, a dynamic closer to mezzopiano than forte / fortissimo, an obligatory register of hard free jazz. However, the lava smolders under the ashes: we feel that the spirits are heating up and all of a sudden, the engine races at maximum speed, Steve Noble's battery bursts, and Stefan Keune's demented breath chops the minute. its orgiastic tenor: maximum nihilistic expressionism is sheared by its delirious articulation sending slag, crushed notes, tears in the timbre, shards of exceptional brevity into space. Guts in the air. It is the notion of time that is shattering. In the third and final track,

"Finally" (23:18), the trio put the cake back together by re on ordering the exchanges. The double bass acquires more space and we discover that Dominic Lash's playing is subtly nourished by the saxophonist's rhetoric by adapting it to the characteristics of the large violin. The drummer carefully organizes percussive waves in crescendo over the long term alternating his accents and white spaces in close coordination with the blades of hazardous trills of the blower, the latter always involved in his spasmodic style but with beautiful nuances. As the minutes go by, the tension inexorably mounts, the game becomes more and more intense, intense enough near a possible final blast. Steve Noble measures his Machiavellian work by closely monitoring the pressure cooker which seems to threaten, heated to white. Dominic Lash's enormous pizzicati hold the whole thing to the surface of the ground, and around the sixteenth minute, the bassist plays alone for a moment, then initiates a pointillist exchange with the blower where he explores the vibrations of the bowstrings with a remarkable work on the timbre, the harmonics, spinning and carding the sound, striking the key, while Keune seeks barely audible highs on one or two notes triturated to the extreme. It is almost in a ghostly silence that the music disappears, reducing itself to a spontaneous decrescendo, but played by masters.

It is undoubtedly one of the collective performances of radical improvisation involving a tenor sax, this one as violently expressionist and spontaneous as it is austere and methodical, the most astonishing that I have been given to listen to by the through a recording, the replay of which allows the understanding of its progress and the analysis of the precise process. Fascinating! [...]"-Orynx Improv And Sounds Blog, translated by Google