Tim Berne

Snakeoil is the first album Tim Berne made as a leader for ECM, after his playing on discs by David Torn and Michael Formanek for the label. It also introduced a new quartet, a "chamber-like group" in Berne's words, that still packs real power. There is no bass and no electric instrument. Berne chose this transparent line-up, he said, "to try and avoid obvious stylistic references and to focus the listener on the musical ideas being presented".

Berne's tough alto saxophone is joined by Oscar Noriega on clarinet and bass clarinet, Matt Mitchell on piano and Ches Smith on drums, timpani, gongs and congas. Two years of rehearsing and playing together came before the session. The album was recorded in January 2011 at Avatar Studios in New York, with James Farber as engineer and Manfred Eicher as producer. Berne wrote five of the six pieces, and Yield is credited to him and Mitchell.

The pieces are long, and four of the six run past twelve minutes. They move through sections rather than around a theme and solos. Simple City opens on Mitchell's piano alone, a melody that keeps resolving into dissonance until Smith's cymbals arrive and Noriega's bass clarinet drifts in under Berne's long alto notes. Scanners and Not Sure are punchy, knotted themes over edgy, driving percussion. Spare Parts, the longest track, begins with saxophone and rolling drums and then passes through a sax and piano duet, a piano solo and a piano and drums duet. Noriega's clarinets often shadow the leader's lines, and with no bassist the four players are very often heard all at once.

In The Guardian, John Fordham called the record "a terrific set, and an object lesson in balancing composition, improvisation and the tonal resources of an acoustic band". Karl Lippegaus in the Süddeutsche Zeitung heard quartet music built on postmodern jazz and the Second Viennese School, a dark, shimmering current that winds in long loops. Greg Burk, writing on MetalJazz in 2012, observed that Mitchell's piano gives the group its cohesion and smooths Berne's jagged edges.

CD edition, ECM 2234, first released by ECM in January 2012.