Edward Ricart Quartet + Paul Dunmall: Chamaeleon

Guitarist Edward Ricart has studied in Europe and aligned with a multinational roster of experimental jazz artists amid his adventurous work in the free-rock duo, Matta Gawa and avant-garde, and Sonic Suicide band. Based in Washington D.C., the artist reaps the benefits of UK tenor sax titan Paul Dunmall and world-traveler, trumpeter Herb Robertson for this ensemble date, comprised of instantaneous compositions.

The band projects an open-world scenario, where experimental jazz improvisation and psycho-rock are embedded within introspective or loosely assembled tone poems; highly intense improvisational segments and pliant rhythms. And the soloists are extraordinarily effective at contrasting and complementing each other throughout.

The final track "Beelining," boasts an invigorating and speedy set of circumstances as Ricart shrewdly lays behind the pulse while dishing out succinct, fuzz-toned lines that counters Dunmall's hyper-mode phrasings. Here, lucid imagery of contentious arguments are culminated. Yet the musicians eventually conjoin and embark on a feeding frenzy, offset by Robertson's high-pitched flute or whistle implement. The ensemble's maddening and tumultuous pace elicits notions of a fiendish plot within the perimeters of good-natured mayhem. Drummer Andrew Barker leads the musicians to the finale with a sweeping, polyrhythmic solo spot that reaffirms the group's take no prisoners mode of execution.

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