So far this remarkable CD has an air of mystery about it: namely, how it is that an important figure in the Euro-American improvisation scene could get together with comparatively unknown Lithuanian instrumentalists and forge a brilliant live recording. The CD's liner notes, in their tentative English, tell only that the collaboration "aroused from Mats' passion for vinyl and a casual acquaintance on the web." The music, apparently, will have to speak for itself. And, indeed, it does.

Mats Gustafsson has long been becoming known along the Chicago-European axis as a multifaceted sax man with his fingers in many pies. Like other great players in that noisy universe, Gustafsson's aesthetic is fueled not only by jazz and New Music, but also by punk and alternative pop styles. He currently stands poised at the edge of mainstream awareness through his collaborations with Sonic Youth's Thurston Moore.

But status aside, it has always been Gustafsson's unique voice as an improviser that results in excellent recordings. All the more remarkable in the case of this album is that he apparently lucked into finding far less well known players from Lithuania who mesh beautifully with his approach to improvisation. This concert recording captures not merely a fine example of an improv show, but features a rare example of a more refined collaboration — the sort one might expect only long-time collaborators to manage.

Overall, the pieces on this CD are much more sectional than much free improvisation. Although there are moments in which the group gets whipped into an Ayler-esque frenzy (that'll happen with multiple reeds and two drummers) the pieces do not trace the oft lamented soft-loud-soft that free improvisations often do. The players here seem to approach the music almost with the ear of arrangers. The music moves through distinct landscapes as the players variously join the shifting clouds of sound and then lay out. Don't like one segment of the music? Wait a few moments, and something quite different is sure to take shape.

Check out the first track, "Just Say No." It begins almost like composed music, with every player listening carefully yet making decisive and appropriate contributions to the collective sound. A low drone becomes gradually surrounded by haunting whispers in extended reed vocabulary.

"Shield" also has interesting architectural features. It begins with the two drummers engaging in an extended duo. They largely interweave standard drum patterns and sounds, rather than engage in the limits testing of players like Han Bennink. The horns come in matching the energy and even the sound of the drums, using rapid staccato tonguing evocative of snare drum rolls. Here again the music reins-in the players. Whenever one of the horn players begins to stray into unrestrained blowing, the other players seem to downshift in response, grounding him. Yet the result feels less binding than a tacit sculpting of the overall sound.

Subtlety is set aside for the short track, "The End", that closes out the disk. It provides a big finish for the live show, but it sounds like as if it was edited from a longer live track. In the context of the rest of the album it comes off as a tacked-on afterthought. Brief as it is, though, this blemish does little to detract from an otherwise excellent demonstration of the power of free improvisation in the hands of these players.