Although I have never seen Jack Wright wear a white lab coat to one of his gigs, it seems somehow more appropriate after hearing "over the transom." Wright's aesthetic is driven by dogged determination to wresting all possible sonic materials from his instruments. The open, meditative attitude dominating this CD somehow highlights this approach. Drummer Ben Hall and cellist Hans Buetow stay in drone mode for most of the CD. Hall uses gongs and down-tuned, tympani-like toms, his playing perhaps resembling a Paul Lytton track broken down and played segment-by-segment, like the Zapruder film. The cello sounds largely blend with the long ringing tones of the cymbals and gongs. Hall and Buetow often sonically meld to the point at which they seem to be a single player.

Within this milieu, Wright's sax work stands out more nakedly than usual. His advancement of extended techniques is such that it is occasionally unclear even to saxophone players how he manages to emit some of the sounds he does (the 3-4 minute mark on the second track is a good example of this). His explorations of muted tones, unusual interruptions of tones, and general dissection of the sounds of reed and brass continually amaze. As heard on his solo records and in his collaborations with Chattanooga's Shaking Ray Levis, Wright is often featured in more raucous settings and utilizes an antic, almost glossolalic saxophone language. But here the musical approach is less one of interaction than of layering and blending. The playing is necessarily more restrained, since the group as a whole is contributing to an atmosphere. The "wrong" gestures and attitudes would stand out, breaking the trance. The overall effect is surreal and mildly industrial, perhaps like a strange, slowly operating machine recorded in some subterranean chamber. The black-and-white industrial photos used for the cover art, featuring pipes and bleak exterior shots, provide apt visual clues to what the listener will find inside. Wright's more playful, goofier inclinations DO occasionally rear their head here and there on the CD. Track three, for example, Wright eventually begins exploring the more "gastrointestinal" possibilities of his saxophone, farting, burbling and wheezing his way to the end of the piece. As a whole, though, this CD is quite single-minded in its documentation of a moodier side of improvised music.