This most recent offering from the trio Looper is a joint release from Another Timbre and Cathnor, two of the finest experimental music labels going these days. The music is typical of the boundary-defying releases that pepper both labels' catalogs; the music itself is anything but typical. Nikos Veliotis (cello) Martin K�chen (reeds) and Ingar Zach (percussion) conform to no single genre or dogma, and yet there are clearly determined forms in play as these three pieces unfold.

I hesitate to use the phrase "improvised music" when describing Looper's vision. It seems that some composition has taken place, yielding the sudden shifts in timbre and texture that might be heard on a Polwechsel disc, or on the final Naked City album. "Grand Red Shift" seems particularly sectionalized. In fact, as the album's evocative title suggests, there is a sense of fragmentation as the music's controlled fire spreads and is contained. Hum is juxtaposed with gongs, producing disruptive beats in post-Lucier fashion. Rhythms emerge, collide, become polyrhythms and fade in slow dance as the music's huge landscapes are revealed. Rarely are we allowed to hear whatever instruments are employed being played conventionally. A stroked cymbal here, a reedy breath there, and what sound like ghost voices serve as the only links to a past that has been usurped, even dismantled.

Yet, that chaotic inter-registral hum, a multifarious drone, does hold the music together even as it is reconfigured throughout. It rises from a whisper, in parts of "Grand Red Shift," to the monstrous roar that threatens to overwhelm "Hazy Dawn" as the ghost voices float over it. Every other sound seems to grow from it even as it is coming apart. By the end of "Near Eternity" it decays out of existence, fading into palpable silence.

Dying Sun is not an easy listening experience, even by the standards of that music formerly known as EAI. However, it is absolutely riveting. The trio is uncompromising, having stripped its music down to the barest essentials, and the disc's multilayered directeness offers new rewards on each listen.