by Thom JurekJimmy Giuffre, Paul Bley, and Steve Swallow had reunited four years prior to this recording session before a live and very enthusiastic audience. On this date, they had been touring together on and off for four years and were as telepathic as in 1961 when they recorded Fusion and Thesis with Creed Taylor at Verve (yeah, the same guy who aesthetically ruined Wes Montgomery and Grover Washington, Jr.). The differences were few but marked: For one, on this date Swallow plays electric bass -- an instrument that Giuffre has enjoyed in his bands since the late '70s. Bley's playing -- trademark as ever with those big spaces in the middle of a dense passage -- is like liquid here; he pours himself through the group tunes and, on his solos, slips through the keys in a fierce contrapuntal assertion of thematic development. Swallow is the most understated and elastic of bassists. He understands implicitly that the place of rhythm in this tr...