Adrian Northover/Marcello Magliocchi/Bruno Gussoni

Experienced improvisers, two Italians and one Brit unite for 13 mostly brief instant compositions which stretch their instruments’ characteristic textures to their limits. Joined by the proficiency of Italian Bruno Gussoni on C flute, bass flute and shakuhachi, UK soprano saxophonist Adrian Northover and Italian percussionist Marcello Magliocchi, both members of the Runcible Quintet and other ensembles, take advantage of this close-knit groupthink to mix and match ideas, techniques and definitions.

Overall the furniture moving in this house on the hill involves Magliocchi laying down animated but inventive rhythms, while Northover and Gussoni explore the farthest reach of their straight or transverse horns singly or with overlapping tones. The drummer concentrates on producing widening bass drum vibrations, metallic rim shots, unattached cymbal pings and gaunt emphasis from wooden stick as he does creating horizontal ruffs, crashes and rumbles. Horn players respond in kind. Warm reed expositions often pivot in unexpected directions as when Northover slap tongues, double tongues or forces taut breaths through the body tube (as on “Dullo”).

Gussoni’s consistent transverse peeps and trills are used for expected flat line decorations or sudden emphasis, but he can also replicate a loon cry with his higher pitched instrument (on “Bobbery”) or use the bass flute’s timbres to widen and overblow notes into deepened snores and snarls. The flutist and saxophonist also layer their interactions, so that a track like “Tink-Tank” depends on harmonizing reed split tones and flute snarls atop nerve beats and cymbal clips.

Interestingly enough, the concluding “The Purification” is not only the CD’s longest track, but one in which the narrative is most varied and free. Idiophone shakes and rattles advance to bell-tree echoes and triangle ratchets as reed vibrations take on harmonica-like or whistling tones as the flute’s high pitches gradually unite with drum rustles and reed note bending to create an evolving straight line.

Proficient in what they’ve created, one suggestion is that next time Northover, Magliocchi and Gussoni add a chordal instrument to fill the occasional improvisational dry spots.

–Ken Waxman

Track Listing: 1.  Cats Eyes 2. Tatami 3. Dullor 4. The Yeth Hounds 5. Bobbery 6. The Man Who Was Never Wrong 7. Tink-Tank 8. Vesicular-Murmer 9. The Gumbi Man 10. Running Shadow 11. Lap-Clap 12. Pigs Whisper 13. The Purification

Personnel: Adrian Northover (soprano saxophone); Bruno Gussoni (C and bass flutes and shakuhachi) and Marcello Magliocchi (drums and percussion)