Having lived in Seattle for a short time in the nineties, the name Jeffrey Morgan is quite familiar to me, and bears somewhat the sheen of legend. I am embarrassed to admit I know nothing of the other two gentlemen on this recording. The liner notes, somewhat tongue in cheek, are of little help, serving mainly to let the listener know not to take things too seriously here.

With Morgan playing tenor and soprano sax, Goyvaerts credited with percussion, objects, toys and Van Buggenhout on EMS synth, White Smoke is a pair of improvised sessions from November 2011. The music could perhaps be loosely defined as walking the line between traditional sounding improv and more sound-and-timbre based playing. I hear a little of Lol Coxhill's tone in Morgan's soprano work, that sort of weird, nasal braying. Goyvaerts swings between busy piles of smash and grab and quiet ringing or tumbling, adding nice bowed harmonics to open "The Silver Gates of the Moon". All the titles more than hint at humor, and there's much evident in the playing as well, particularly in the burbling synthesizer sounds and well-placed wacky percussion hits.

To some ears the electronics may seem out-of-place here, but if listened to closely, they're a challenging foil for the other two acoustic instruments. The percussionist does a marvelous job of finding sounds that are halfway between the squeaky-clean EMS and the harder-edged saxes. I swear at times I can hear a trumpet, but can't tell who's making the sound. Perhaps a combination of the mashed overtones of all three? More mystery sounds are provided by what I assume to be Goyvaerts: low thunder at the end of "Garden Of Delights" and metallic tone rows to begin "Wild Boar Hunting", wherein Morgan's tone converts into that of a chirimia, even more nasal than usual.

One precedent I can think of for this set would be the analog synth versus reeds of Sun Ra. Odd that two Europeans and a transplanted American could make sounds that conjure British music hall and '60's freak out free jazz in equal measure.