Originally intended to involve Parker's trio with John Russell and John Edwards, the definitive version of House Full Of Floors also includes Aleks Kolkowski, who was attending the session in order to perform some wax cylinder recordings (one of them, aptly titled "Wind Up", closing the program in somewhat eerie fashion) and found himself playing in three of the nine tracks instead. His other instruments — Stroh viola and saw — fit the preliminary intentions perfectly; not a surprise, given the level of artistic egalitarianism involved.

Immortalizing the spur of the moment is a difficult task in itself; even worse is managing to set on a disc a full hour of significant improvisation. In that sense, Parker (here on soprano and tenor) seems to defy any logic of uniformity, everything heard from him revealing — in each and every instance — a plethora of alternative solutions and quicksilver-ish intuitions informed by the flexible intelligence of a performer whose melodic concepts predate the future of decades. The interaction with Russell's guitar is unequivocally brilliant: apparently infinite unidiomatic propagations, consistent dynamism sparkling with radiant harmonics, intricate sonic poetry exuding from the crackles of fingerings and lines. Edwards contributes to this viscerally refined exchange by instinctively inserting splendid arco suggestions between all those splintered statements, or by pummeling the low-frequency bag in an unintentional depiction of his resilient vision, ultimately resulting as the trio's collating factor. The duet with Russell — "Shown Jot" — is a genuine highlight, a magnificent, delicate gem immersed in glowingly skewed resonance.

In "Figure Dancing" and "Aka AK", Kolkowski joins in with a fusion of modesty and command, the acoustic spectrum suddenly turned into a far-sighted communion of the spare parts of an obsolescent orchestra. A single organism emitting something not easy to decipher, veritable nourishment to ears hungry for inventiveness. Glorifying these musicians for the umpteenth time does not mean adapting to a clich้, but authenticating the admiration for people who manage to make us richer whenever we meet their music.

Evan Parker: House Full of Floors Is On Sale at Squidco!