What might appear to be a standard piano/bass/drums trio is anything but. The music on Au Cr�puscule occupies a territory somewhere between post-1980 AMM and some of the more thoughtful free improv ensembles of this century, and it's a beauty.

The two tracks, each about 20 minutes long, unspool naturally and at their own leisure; not to say that the music is languid or sluggish, simply unhurried in a delightful way. Any comparisons to AMM begin with pianist Tuerlinckx, a marvelous player who has at least a few things in common with John Tilbury's approach, including a profound sense of submerged melody and overt color. In fact, I'm not sure if there's a moment of "simple" piano keyboard sound here; the instrument has either been prepared internally or manipulated (struck, stroked, etc.) inside and out. Beins in the Pr�vost role is also not too far-fetched although his own range of coloration, while including those bowed cymbals, is arguably wider than Pr�vost's in recent years and, as with Tuerlinckx, he has always possessed a subtle, underlying sense of melody or tonality that plays off wonderfully against the pianist. But the glue here, and the element that differentiates this session from anything AMM-like, is bassist Gerigk, who I've not encountered before. Consistently rich in tone and providing not rhythms but pulses, drones and throbs, his notes reach out and grasp those from the piano and percussion, creating a gravitational dynamic that holds matters together in complex and swirling patterns.

The elements in play here are by no means unfamiliar but their deployment is spectacular, resulting in one of the finer, deeper improv sets to be heard in recent years.