Rich Halley has spent half a century carving out a niche for locally-sourced left-field jazz in Portland, Oregon. In that time, he has notched up credits with the likes of Andrew Hill and Oliver Lake and released 27 albums; most of his collaborators are Oregon- based. This release, following on from last year's NYC-recorded Terra Incognita, is a straightforward free-jazz blowing session raised several notches by an on-form Matthew Shipp leading long-term associate Michael Bisio on bass and the experienced Newman Taylor Baker on drums.

A brief riff launches ‘Tetrahedron’, the album's opening track. Halley spits phonics and honks; bass and drums pulsate and rattle; and Shipp finesses early Cecil Taylor underneath – later, ‘Oblique Angles’ follows a similar path. ‘Vector’ comes next, with bass walking, Halley syncopated and melodic and Shipp finding his personal voice. And then a ballad, ‘Spaces Between’, with Shipp spacious and sublime. The set closes with the angsty ‘Lower Strata’ opening as a feature for drums and ‘The Curved Horizon’ firing on all cylinders from the start.

Halley's core aesthetic adds the influence of Sonny Rollins, Albert Ayler and rootsy R&B to the creative music he heard in mid-1960s Chicago. This album finds it relatively unchanged, but, with Shipp on song, still pulsing with life.