The more familiar I become with Paul Dunmall's daunting discography, the further away I get from anything definitive regarding something as admittedly mundane as a categorization. If nothing else convinces that Dunmall's work confounds such pursuits, listen to "Lit Feathers Sweeping Stone" from The Laughing Stone, his new collaboration with bassist Olie Brice. Dunmall's flute (a relatively rare treat!) glides its serpentine melody, a bit like something out of Debussy, over Brice's new-Romantic pizzicato. There's plenty of space as they drift in and out of harmonic synchronization, exquisite shards of melody in tandem eventually piercing through any historical or geographical allusion. An equally wonderful clarinet excursion travels terrain adjacent if not quite similar. "Dust Swirling" sweeps registral continuity aside in favor of huge arpeggiated passages of melody in flux during which Brice's unique take on arco playing is foregrounded. Imagine the second-movement half-arcs from Shostakovich's 15th quartet to get an idea of how Brice shapes motives and phrases. In "As Ripples Skip in a Shallow" Brice's semi-proportional motives and patterns lay the groundwork for Dunmall's alto, which eventually enters the blues mode in which he's so comfortable. Brice goes so far as to begin walking with commensurate purpose, all of which demonstrates, again, that there's no placing these two veterans in any conventionally shaped box for long.

It's the changes in each moment that prove the most difficult for the pen and vital to the ear. The first minute of "Let the Fox Have his Fill" tell multiple stories in layers of reference. Dunmall and Brice begin by droning, deep in that bluesy mode, until their trading melodies leads to a glorious trip outside time and rhythm, at 0:19, of Brice channeling James Garrison. So much of the piece swings in and out of the pan-tonal melodic ideas Dunmall loves to let fly at a moment's notice, but Brice ups the anti at 3:58 by dropping in a few descending slides, to which Dunmall responds by entering multiphonic mode. The next few pointillistic minutes must be heard to be believed, conjuring shades of Euro-free improv's formative days. I'll say no more about the disc's final sonority than that, as with the album as a whole, I wish it could go on forever!