All credit to RareNoise who continue to give voice to bands that roam like rogue asteroids between planets jazz, rock and prog (as if such labels signify much). As their trips-off-the-tongue moniker suggests (the band could learn something from My Dying Bride), Free Nelson Mandoomjazz occupy a curious hinterland between free jazz and doom rock. The latter is an umbrous world of funereally slow tempos, ominous themes and, shall we postulate, limited melodic ambition. Mind you, doom rock is positively rib-tickling compared to ‘drone doom’ and ‘death doom’.

Sneddon and company, soaked in their Sabs heritage, try to take it down dark and dirgy, but oddly, it just ain't doom enough. ‘Calcutta Cutie’, for example, with its piano and trumpet additions limps like a hamstrung orc toward a Blue Note vibe. Sneddon can change gears between single note throb and muscly free-phrasing as on ‘Open The Gate’, but her bass/drum colleagues, for all their shady vibe just don't get raven black enough.