The opening work, “L-R-G”, is written for a trio of reeds, high brass and low brass: Mitchell on reeds, Leo Smith on trumpet and George Lewis on trombone. Rather than treating the ensemble as a conventional horn line, Mitchell positions the three voices as distinct vectors in a shared field. Lines intersect at odd angles, chords appear as fleeting alignments rather than fixed blocks, and silence is treated as an active fourth presence. The writing and improvising are tightly interwoven: you can hear notated shapes and intervallic ideas, but also the elasticity with which Smith and Lewis inflect them, nudging phrases into microtonal bends, timbral smears or sudden bursts of resonance. The music feels rigorous yet weightless, a slow calibration of balance between registers and colours.

If “L-R-G” is a study in vertical tuning, “The Maze” opens the field outward. Scored for an octet of percussion, it brings together Mitchell, Thurman Barker, Anthony Braxton, Douglas Ewart, Malachi Favors, Joseph Jarman, Don Moye and Henry Threadgill around an arsenal of drums, cymbals, bells, woodblocks and more unusual sound-makers. The piece’s title is apt: this is a labyrinth of rhythms and textures in which pathways emerge and disappear, intersections form and dissolve. Rather than building toward a single climax, the octet moves through shifting constellations - clusters of metallic shimmer, waves of low drum resonance, intricate lattices of small sounds. At any given moment, multiple time-feels coexist, giving the impression of parallel trajectories rather than a single, unified pulse. Yet beneath the apparent complexity lies a clear sense of design: densities rise and fall, timbral zones are introduced and revisited, and the ear is guided, never simply overloaded.

The set closes with “S II Examples”, a solo soprano saxophone piece that condenses Mitchell’s concerns to their barest form: one instrument, one body, one breath. Here, “nothing to really hurt the ears” does not mean comfort music, but a focused, contemplative exploration of contour, interval and resonance. Short, etched figures alternate with elongated tones; gentle inflections of pitch and dynamics become structural events; pauses are allowed to hang just long enough to reset the ear. If the ensemble works offer mazes of interaction, this solo feels like walking their corridors alone, tracing the underlying geometry with fingertips rather than floodlights.

Remastered from the original tapes by Rudy Van Gelder, this edition restores the music’s clarity and depth, making the fine gradations of attack, decay and overlap fully audible. The combination of personnel - from Smith and Lewis to Braxton, Jarman, Threadgill, Favors and Moye - might suggest a blowout of star power, but Mitchell’s writing keeps ego firmly in check; what comes through instead is a collective commitment to precision, curiosity and patient exploration. LRG/The Maze/S II Examples stands as one of his most quietly radical achievements: an album that won’t assault your ears, yet will gently, insistently rewire how you think about instruments, ensembles and the very act of composing with sound.