Point4: Panopticon

However, that statement unto itself might seem a bit bold, especially when considering its impressive discography and largely exuberant acceptance from global avant-jazz and New Music aficionados. With this double duo piano and drums lineup, the band shows how the sky's the limit.

Recognized for his recordings for ECM Records, pianist Jon Balke augments the band sound with electronics-based treatments. During several passages the ensemble conjures up lucid imagery that is apt to take the listener on a mind-bending journey that seemingly defies elements of time and space. Reference points are hard to come by where the music assumes variable metrics and shapes. Think of free-form minimalist type sound-sculpting that is synchronized with ethereal backdrops.

The foursome executes spacey and harrowing frameworks marked by Balke and pianist Kenneth Karlsson's use of depth to coincide with their animated single note flurries. And they project lots of timbre amid a surfeit of unanticipated shifts in direction, often-enamored by the percussionists' booming drum hits, jangling bells and asymmetrical fills.

On the album's finale "Side Shadow," Balke and Karlsson render a series of oscillating piano and electronics patterns atop the percussionists' swarming metrics. It all casts a rather eerie effect as the music segues into a great void. Overall, the quartet parlays expressionism into many sub-plots and underlying motifs as if they're spinning a huge geometrical web that transcends any strict sense of musical normalcy. It's a powerful, yet daintily outlined trek that should offer gobs of stimulation to one's neural network.

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