Before getting into the whys and where-to-fors, let us start with a simple declaration: this album from Berlin-based Korean tenor saxophonist Jung-Jae Kim is some of the absolute best free improvisation this reviewer has ever heard and, having heard and seen plenty, that means something.

Whether or not this first-time meeting would yield similar transcendent results again is not the point, as it is not really the point of free improvisation in general. It happened and the vibration of the world has been fundamentally changed.

The title is not only apt but emblematic. Unlike other extemporaneous encounters that evoke nature, an unsupervised factory, snarled traffic or any other closed chaotic systems, Shamanism is rites music, meant not for the concert hall or club but a Jeju Island guttang.

On paper this is another star in the Interstellar Space cosmos, and a double one at that as Kim has soprano and alto saxophonist Sunjae Lee and two drummers, Junyoung Song and Sunki Kim, as his fellow acolytes for the nearly 80 minute ritual. But where it differs from other such groupings is how controlled, precise, disciplined it remains — whether with melismatic drones, mesmerizing swirls, existential wails, minimalist chants or the most microscopic of gestures — making its length one of its strengths.

To speak of single tracks — shamanistic concepts given in Korean idiograms and English transliterations — is almost apostasy; this music cannot be stopped once started, cannot be given less than absolute devotional attention. Nor is focusing on the individual "performances" possible as the group has risen to the rarest level of symbiosis.

To achieve this level of balance, arrive at such clarity, subsume ego and transcend time so thoroughly is a rare and precious achievement. Anyone who believes in Albert Ayler/Mary Maria Park's declaration that music is the healing force of the universe will need this album.