Toot

Featuring: Axel Dörner, Thomas Lehn, Phil Minton

Trio improvisations recorded at festivals in Esslingen, Germany (2005) and Klagenfurt, Austria (2008). Axel Dörner (trumpet), Thomas Lehn (analogue synthesiser) and Phil Minton (voice) - TOOT's second album, following One on Sofa Records. Two extended collective improvisations finding three masters of European improvisation in absolutely fine form.

Dörner brings his trumpet deconstructions - brassy hisses, burred growls, sputtered flurries. Lehn provides warm analogue synth grit and oscillations tossed with lightning reflexes and gestural sense of line. Minton - the elder statesman, vocalist extraordinaire - contributes his "man of a thousand voices" with groans, howls, pinched rasps and explosive exhortations. As the German magazine freistil observes, "Voices and mood change more quickly than the associated beats per minute. Two live pieces transmit the whole splendour of improvised music, its egalitarian character, the impossibility of settling on a definition, and of striving ever further. Powerful sentiments without sentimentality, unconstrained pop without populism."

"The collective manages to subsume the individuals," writes one reviewer. "Minton's rambunctious impulses are put in check. Dörner filters the more effusive aspects of his jazz-based playing through his timbral abstractions. Lehn weaves through the spaces to balance out the trio." Minton often seems to imitate the instruments, "thus setting up a form of call and response as one imitates the other and so forth."

Dan Warburton captures it perfectly: "You can hear them listening to each other - and they take great pleasure in going their own ways when you least expect it. It all adds up to one of the most musically satisfying improv releases of the year."

This trio plays "good, old-fashioned improv. As wonderful as it ever was." Essential document from three European improvisation legends.