Demonstrating how quickly committed improvisers can reach consensus, this newly unearthed session from 2019 preserved the first-ever quartet date by a group of UK-based players. Bassist Dominic Lash has worked with everyone from Alexander Hawkins to John Butcher; tenor saxophonist Mark Hanslip with the likes of Stephen Grew and Johnny Hunter; and drummer Paul Hession with Mick Beck and Simon H. Fell. What defines this 33 minute disc is how perceptively Costa Rica-born laptop manipulator Federico Reuben syncs his coded and processed creations to the others’ acoustic sounds.

An academic as well as an electro-acoustic player, Reuben has worked with the London Improvisers Orchestra and multiple sound innovators in smaller groups. Here his static, glitches, samples and live processing bring an additional element to the taut improvisations without upsetting the sonic flow. A fine instance of this is “Dog And Tooth”, where Reuben’s processing reflects back into the mix as Hanslip’s reed slide from smeary altissimo whorls and shakes to low-pitched snorts and tongue stops. Almost simultaneously his playing is underlined by Lash’s multi-string sweeps, with the piece concluded by combining Hession’s clatters and clunks with proliferating voltage-created glitches.

The bassist performs a similar linear function throughout the disc with thick pumps and cadenced pulses preserving the narrative flow. Meanwhile slurping reed cries and note-bending breaths are intertwined with flanged, stretched and echoing processing samples which create their own path as well as accompaniment. Reuben’s skilful keyboard manipulations are paramount on the concluding “Child Coordinates” as the saxophonist’s breathy puffs and basso snuffs are backed by processed piano patterns as if an avant Tommy Flanagan was backing an equally outside Ben Webster. Paced with a walking bass line, the ersatz keyboard finally reveals its electro-acoustic genesis after it suddenly begins sounding synthetic, music box and hurdy-gurdy-like tones presaging Haslip snarling the same phrase over and over as a coda.

Seven years on, the music is still distinctive and inventive. It would be significant to hear how the four play together now.