(Unsounds)

When three great musicians meet there are always lots of “ifs”, because you never know if the chemistry will produce the expected result. In the case of “Thermal”, it looks like the trio was created by a computer, such is the perfect disposition of sounds, minds and absolute respect for one another that the three players brought to the table. Fourteen tracks, most of them pretty short; Andy Moor has his strings going from a rusty scrape to an ethereal drone of adjacent tones, going into territories near to”Branca/Chatham/Moore & Ranaldo” school, while Lehn gets incredibly various manifestations from his analogue EMS synthesizer, resulting maybe in the most creative synthetist in recent and not so recent years; Thomas literally puts to shame the ones who use Oberheims and Wavestations for a single low note (the so called “Dark Ambient Syndrome”). But something must be said for many sax players, because after they’ll experience John Butcher’s talent, his multiphonic control, his dynamics domination, the beauty of his “regular” (??) tone – well, they won’t be missed when they’ll finally put their instrument away, together with their dusty Real Books.

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