From the polite applause and clearing of throats, a rhythm emerges. Joe McPhee taps it on a wine glass, a subdued but potent ostinato brimming with syncopation. He transfers the cadences to tenor, slowly expanding single note repetitions to melodic motives, then lines, then inter-registral leaps, but always returning to some permutated form of that initial rhythmic figure. We're even taken for a ride in what sounds like a car as McPhee adds his voice to the mix. The journey constitutes the first 18 minutes of this excellent reissue. To describe the piece's ebb and flow in greater detail would be absurd and impossible, beyond which it really should be experienced rather than analyzed.

McPhee's rendering of "Naima" shows as much allegiance to Ayler as to Coltrane, and it is beautiful in its relative simplicity. As would occur so many times with Trio X, the melody becomes a malleable construct in McPhee's hands, a groundwork on which to build the free fantasy we hear. His tenor tone runs the dynamic gamut, and in post-Ayler conception, each tone is more expressive than the last. Yet, there is no feeling of fragmentation as the familiar melody swims in and out of sultry focus, fractured by the harder edges of free improvisation before reassembling.

As with the equally wonderful Variations on a Blue Line, this album is a live document, and it is comprised mainly of solo material. In that context, it is a surprise to hear percussionist Reto Webber on the closer, snap-crackle-and-popping in the John Stevens mold to Mcphee's flugelhorn improv. His recent work on pocket trumpet is sparser, turning the present mixture of runs, wobbles, smears and gurgly exhortations into a real revelation, each long tone a jewel amidst the wildly whimsical phrases. The switch back to tenor ushers in a fascinating dialogue as Webber answers McPhee's lines with some kind of horn that wouldn't sound out of place on a Creative Construction Company disc.

As with everything from this period, the recordings are first-rate, and why shouldn't they be, as Werner Uellinger is producing. Dempsy Vs. Corbett is doing an excellent service to McPhee fans everywhere by getting these gems back in the catalog, and anyone who misses them is missing an integral part of McPhee's musical development.