Perry Robinson

Some recordings are so unabashedly about the idiosyncrasies of the improvisers, specific references and the simplicity of the session that it's hard to see anyone but the faithful getting the point. This set, featuring clarinettist Perry Robinson (one of the few modern-jazz practitioners of his instrument) might suggest that at first. Yet Robinson is a broadminded performer with klezmer and folk music associations (he's also worked with Pete Seeger), whose work is remarkably accessible. Bassist Ed Schuller's Sooner Than Before has much of Ornette Coleman's stop-start mischievousness and eruptions of boiling swing (Schuller also sings in his bass solos, but it's very musical and irritation-free). There's a delicious exercise in clarinet tone-control of a bass drone on Funky Giora (which starts with a purr but eventually develops a klezmer bounce). A song about the early 20th-century labour activist Joe Hill starts improv-abstract and turns into something close to a New Orleans strut. It all feels as if you are eavesdropping on three musicians having a whale of a time doing what they do best.
-John Fordham. The Guardian.co.uk