Lawson/Dodds/Wood
Numbers
Better Late Records BLR0049

"Subtitled 'music from 7 improvisations', this album captures Steve Lawson (bass, loops), drummer Roy Dodds and Patrick Wood (keyboards, acoustic and electric guitars), plus (on three tracks) saxophonist/bass clarinettist Mark Lockheart and (on one) vocalist Gwyn Allen, spontaneously creating seven pieces of music, their length varying between two and a half and nearly fifteen minutes.

Spontaneous creation/free improvisation in this case turns out to be somewhat different from the music generally associated with the rubric; instead of music created from what might be described as mutual spark-striking, this usually takes a preconceived element – a bassline, a motif, a rhythm – and then adds layers of improvisation on top of it.

The result, when Lockheart's plaintive saxophones are involved, is not a million miles away from the multi-textured, delicate music of the 1990s Jan Garbarek Group, or from the more recent recordings of Andy Sheppard; at other ti