A very welcome reissue of a soprano sax duo recording originally released in 1985 on the legendary FMP Records that, according to the Penguin Guide to Jazz on CD is “one of the best and most significant free albums of the decade”.

It's also a recording that hasn't dated. By the late 1970s Steve Lacy, who had inspired Coltrane to take up soprano sax two decades earlier, was dubbing his music ‘poly-free’, an approach, somewhat ahead of its time, that veered between abstract improv and more structural elements.

But here Lacy, in a head-to-head with iconoclastic sax-improviser Evan Parker live at Haus am Waldsee in Berlin, play entirely free and ‘in the moment’. In an intense yet involving exchange, Lacy and Parker demonstrate an uncanny ability to mould a highly convincing structural narrative together on the fly at mostly lightning tempos.

Such a dialogue between soprano saxes lasting close to 45 minutes will be uncomfortable on the ears for many, even involving such a high-level pairing as this, but on the aptly-titled Chirps the shrieky high-end of the soprano range is explored only in passing. Instead there's a fascination in how the pair's super-quick reflexes set up an intimate exchange and development of melodic motifs, the latter a key trademark of Lacy's, and abrupt shifts in mood and intensity. A significant reissue then, with an appeal that reaches beyond the hardcore improv scene.