Set up like a fusion power trio featuring a guitar, bass guitar and percussion, JEM — named with the initial of each player's first name — is anything but. That's because while most of the 14 tracks are in the three minute range the players constantly straddle the line between improvised and more conventional music.

Americans, Elliott Sharp, who plays 8-string guitarbass, bass clarinet and electronics is equally proficient in notated music and blues and has played with everyone from Carlos Zíngaro and Zeena Parkins to Hubert Sumlin and Carl Stone. Drummer and percussionist JT Lewis is part of the Harriet Tubman band and recorded with the likes of Herbie Hancock and Lou Reed. Meanwhile Italian born Marco Cappelli plays classical and electric guitars and electronics and has worked with musicians as divergent as Michel Godard, Enrico Rava and Marc Ribot.

What that means is that for every drum backbeat, electric bass throb and frenetic guitar flange there are chalumeau clarinet echoes, drum sequence that depend on clatter stick splashes and paced, single frails from the nylon-string guitar. It also sets up challenges between the trio's use of raw power and pressure to make textural points and individual member's ability to ease the harsh interactions enough so that interludes of near melody are exposed.

You can hear this on tracks the subsequent "Azhdarchids" and "Divitiae". On the first a three-way power trio evolves as every crunching guitar run and equivalent drum ruff and bass guitar thumb pop faces singular timbres enhanced and vibrated with electronic processing. Divergence is expressed by "Divitiae" however. Here a duet between downward acoustic strums and dobro-like below-the-bridge string scratches creates brief snatches of lyricism underscored by distant cymbal clashes and expanded with the judicious application of voltage oscillations.

Contributing to this individuality are tracks such as "Brumation', which moves at about half the speed of the more aggressive sequences. But this reveals the sound architecture even more as elemental reed lowing liquidly explores split tones and smears as metallic string picking moves in the opposite direction to confirm contrapuntal responses.

Overall, Apices offers up enough bellicose drum backbeats, buzzing guitar extensions and thick bass-pulses to satisfy adventurous head bangers. Yet careful listening also allows brain shakers to experience the intricate spatial engineering that goes into sound construction. If there's criticism it's that fewer, longer tracks would have highlighted this mixture more distinctly.