The duo of Montreal-based French-Canadian saxophonist François Carrier and drummer Michel Lambert are an all-improv partnership of real class – Carrier has appeared on the US jazz magazine Down Beat’s famous readers’ poll. They recorded this eight-part set at Montreal’s Resonance Cafe in 2013. Carrier, who plays alto sax and Chinese oboe, frequently displays a warmly sonorous tone that will gratify those discomfited by free jazz’s abrasive tendencies, and Lambert often scurries and bustles behind him with a discreet energy and musicality that recalls the late UK improv master John Stevens. Shimmering lyrical statements mix with tumbling passages of edgier multiphonics, while Lambert’s bass drum bumps and prods. Carrier sometimes recalls the likes of Lol Coxhill and Steve Lacy, or even a more full-bodied Lee Konitz on the the whimsically reflective, songlike openings of Mock Sun and Superstring. It’s a real dialogue, played with both freedom and focus.
