Return Of The New Thing - Traque (2003)

This is excitingly impure music; the options offered by jazz of all kinds, rock, blues, new music, free-improv and beyond are all kept open, and the listener quickly learns that from moment to moment, anything can happen. There is an authentic rampaging energy here, but there's also a smile behind the fury, which sets the album apart from the frowning grandeur of “Ascension” or “Machine Gun” or, for that matter, the “ecstatic jazz” of the 1990s.