It would be easy to be wrong about Spring Heel Jack. Here's the wrong take on the British electronica duo: After a half dozen releases on their own, they discovered real instruments and started recruiting improvisers from New York and Europe to fill out their discs.

It would also be wrong to say that they were fit into the mold of Thirsty Ear's Blue Series overseer Matthew Shipp, who has also been working with electronicists, turtablists and rappers on his own recent releases, or that the records they've been doing have become formulaic.

The fact of it is, 2001's Masses (with a huge cast that included Shipp, Tim Berne, Guillermo E. Brown, Roy Campbell, Daniel Carter, Mat Maneri, Evan Parker and William Parker) was one of that year's most exciting jazz records, and was a strong follow-up to the previous year's Disappeared, which featured John Surman on bass clarinet on two tracks and trumpeter Ian R. Watson on three more.

The next effort, AMaSSED from 2002, kept Shipp and the Parkers and added some Euro players, including Han Bennink, Paul Rutherford, Kenny Wheeler and J Spaceman (Spiritualized's Jason Pierce). The backbone remained, but it was a European sensibility that dominated.

If that wasn't a retread, the third one would surely have to be: the ubiquitous live album, where old ideas are recommitted before witnesses. But Live is another surprise. The other records, while still essentially improv meetings, felt a bit more like DJ projects with the variety of soloists on different tracks. Live has a solid line-up of Shipp, Bennink, the Parkers and the Spaceman, and while the previous releases had 8 or 10 tracks per disc, this one has only two. The band gets a chance to stretch out rather than simply deliver a concept. As on AMaSSED, Shipp plays Fender Rhodes exclusively, and he and Spaceman give a funky 70s groove to the recording, but not so much as to drag it down ormake it feel dated. Likewise, Bennink pounds in parts but generally stays true to the proceedings. William Parker is, of course, a rock, keeping the foundation but always shifting it, and Evan Parker (heard exclusively on tenor sax) is in fine form. None of the players overwhelm; it's a solid and unique slow jam.

The duo, John Coxon and Ashley Wales, are always present, subtly in the background, and indeed the players they assemble would never make these records without them. But these are jazz records. They're augmented with contemporary sounds and sensibilities - there's always something going on underneath the solos besides more jazz. These records are about musicianship, and SHJ stay of the way (they don't even list their names this time, noting simply "Spring Heel Jack: all other instruments and electronics").

Jazz musicians, or the good ones at any rate, are forever in search of new situations to bring new challenges. Spring Heel Jack have a knack for cooking up those challenges and doing it well.