Noah Kaplan, Giacomo Merega, Joe Moffett, Crows & Motives

We return today with another good free trio effort that features Giacomo Merega on electric bass, along with Noah Kaplan on alto sax and Joe Moffett on trumpet. The album is titled Crows & Motives (Underwolf).

It is an album of open-form freedom, a chance for all three artists to express lines and note-choices that meld together into an ever shifting unity. Merega has a burnished electric bass fluidity that sets the bottom foundation for the music well and shows inventive originality. Sometimes he shifts into fuzz-distortion and that gives the trio a more neo-psychedelic edge. Kaplan can be mercurial or lithely floating. Moffett sounds limber and full.

There are spontaneous effusions and what sound like composed or at least deliberately choreographed motives that play in and out of the continuous dialoging. In the 33-plus minutes of the EP your attention gets focused by the unexpected shifts and turns the trio plunges into heartily.

It's a fine effort all around, a good addition to the ever blossoming art of the improvisers today.