Superb micro-improv document from a quartet led by Don Cherry disciple Miguel, who's taken his mentor's achingly probing tone and smeared its context so as to virtually transmogrify it. Along for the ride is fellow deconstructionist Rafael Toral, on a mission (revealed by his own recent clutch of recordings) to revive traditionalist jazz dictums through a contemporarily organized electronic matrix. Though perhaps just another participant on The Tone Gardens, his presence is not only keenly felt but vital to Miguel's own designs.

Those designs require large breathing spaces within which to expand, and Miguel and co. are most accommodating. Aside from the absolutely flawless, crisp recording (especially noteworthy considering that two of the three pieces are live dates), The Tone Gardens corrals together individuals bringing with them instrumentation rarely utilized in post-jazz electroacoustica. On "First Garden," Miguel's muted resonances are underpinned by Toral's discretely affected computer sine waves and C�sar Burago's seedpods and "dead radio", whose subtle cushion of pink fuzz lends a decidedly extraterrestrial air to the itinerant soundscape. "Second Garden" is no less emphatic, Miguel establishing a steady stream of coarse textures around which blurt Fala Mariam's muted alto trombone and Toral's soft-sculpted yet quietly punctuative amplifier feedback storms. Rather than court aimless sounds with little synergistic continuity, the players integrate the performance hall ambience into great blocks of silence and discretely formulated skeins of electronic backwash. It appears disjointed, even chaotic to the untrained ear, but there's an immersive quality here, through textures rendered and angles pursued, that excises the music from any categorical generic straitjacket and gives it purpose.

The closing twenty minute "Third Garden" resembles nothing less than a sonic terrarium a-flitter with incumbent life, Miguel coaxing buds to grow, Toral's flexing waves of white noise that cross vast temporal distances as well as corporeal ones. Burago's wafting metals and shaken percussions further lend the performance a mythical gravitas, hovering between ancient burial-ground ritual and urban rite; it's a fascinating place to inhabit, Miguel and his cohorts erecting new spaces where architects of similar innovation may take flight.