Flamboyant free jazz progenitor Cecil Taylor enjoyed a somewhat unlikely musical partnership with Sheffield-born drummer and improv pioneer Tony Oxley from their first meeting in 1988 right up until Taylor's death in 2018. In fact, for the last decade of his life – long after he'd stopped recording, around the turn of the millennium – playing with Oxley remained Taylor's preferred mode of expression.

On this live performance recorded in 2002, it's easy to hear why. While Taylor favours a heavily percussive attack – famously described by Val Wilmer as akin to playing “88 tuned drums” – Oxley approaches the kit as a paint box of timbres and textures, reached through extended technique and a rig augmented with scraps of metal, gongs and bells. As Taylor lunges and cartwheels like a Conlon Nancarrow player-piano on hyper-drive and Oxley issues ghostly shrieks and metallic whispers, it's almost as if the two stylists have agreed to trade roles. Moreover, while the idea of telepathic communion has become a commonplace when describing the process of making improvised music, with Taylor and Oxley there's a real sense of something uncanny in the sudden stops and blossoming moments of beauty. They were, without doubt, masters at work.