Travelling Sound Images-Cognitive Transfers [Trio] is just one of the latest installments in a several year surge primarily of live releases from multi-reedist Udo Schindler. It is the 20th installment in his LowToneStudies series, as Schindler (double bass clarinet, sopranino sax, tenor sax, and cornet) is joined by Werner Dafeldecker on double bass and Gunnar Geisse on laptop guitar and virtual instruments, which seem to revolve around a laptop-pedal set-up.

On Travelling Sound Images, Schindler, Dafeldecker and Geisse are intent on creating and exploring the subtle layers of electro-acoustic environments. Sounds billow and release, they loom and lumber before they dissipate. They are richly colored and deeply layered but also transient, much like the ebbing and flowing streams of a spring wind. It can be cold and spikey, or hot and blustery, or simply gusty. But, always, it is unsteadily textured.

The three pieces on the album — simply titled "TSI_Cognitive Transfers [Trio]" — parts 1 -3 — run into each other. They are movements in a greater improvised piece. Part 1 puckers, squeaks, and plunks like an old steam heating pipe. Part 2 begins with long, sweeping tones that smear into each other, as if being played on a pipe organ. It is suspenseful, and even more so as the later stages of the piece incorporate the gurgling techniques of Part 1 coupled with some glitchy contributions from Geisse. Then, the trio moves to the low end in part 3, where Schindler muddles his double bass clarinet with Dafeldecker's deep arco. This piece pulses more than the others, given the appearance of momentum while, in actuality, the tempo seems to slow throughout. As with the other two parts, the dynamic range is small, even as the textural variation is quite wide.

Together, the three section evoke a collage of fragments that are both jarringly juxtaposed and seamlessly woven together. Nam June Paik's television sculptures might be a good analogy, as the elements that should not necessarily work together blend in a confusing but convincing singularity. Here, however, the music is composed and performed in real-time and a single space (live at Schnitzer & Studio in Munich), so we have to read intentionality into the elements. Geisse is the disruptive one, alternately painting blurry soundscapes and throwing out odd-ball sounds that Schindler and Dafeldecker capture, emulate, and deflect. Dafeldecker's bass is often weighty, holding to the background and maintaining depth. Schindler is reserved but responsive, focusing on control and the finer edges of sound. In that, he, again, shows his mastery of a variety of reeds and, for the first time I have heard him, cornet.

In short, consider this trio another peculiar feather in Schindler's already fully-plumaged cap. I am less familiar with his comrades in this effort, but I must assume the same for them, as well. This is wonderful music, very much in the moment and of the moment.