Natural Artefacts: California Connection

Keyboardist Susanna Lindeborg and her Swedish band-mates form a bond with San Francisco Bay Area musicians, percussionist and electronics performer Gino Robair and electronics denizen Tim Perkis on this venturesome set recorded live at UC Berkeley and in the studio. As the Natural Artefacts band originated when Lindeborg and her longtime musical partner, saxophonist Ove Johansson collaborated with fellow countryman, composer and electronics ace Per Anders Nilsson.

Many of these pieces are titled after California bridges that underscore the musicians' interconnecting acoustic-electric improvisations and a hearty musical climate, comprised of counterbalancing statements, venturesome dialogues and a host of micro-motifs. The album is seeded in dense explorations amid bizarre episodes where the musicians engage in some intensely devised electronics-based escapades.

The quintet abides by an open playing field, which is a prime motivator that sustains a high level of interest. "Chasing Webern" is a multipart work, propelled by Lindeborg's staggered piano voicings that create a sense of uneasiness. But the musicians enter the picture, captured by quirky EFX patterns and an odd-metered pulse as Johansson takes a free-flight approach on tenor sax. Moving forward, the ensemble generates high-heat atop a splintered plot. They coalesce and engage in multiple dialogues and unison phrasings as Robair circumnavigates his drum kit, spurring the band into a myriad of multifarious improvisational opuses. Hence, the California Connection comes to fruition via an engineering marvel of sorts, modeled with spaced out vistas, circuitous freeways and a host of mind-blowing concepts.