Snakeoil

Between chamber jazz and free jazz; adventurous quartet suites with lots of that echoey ECM sound. Tracks move through multiple modds but tend to include both rainy-day spareness and bustling avant-jazz composing. 2 and 5 grab the ears most immediately; 3 takes a little patience but is totally worth it.

Ches Smith of Good For Cows is the drummer!
Tim Berne - sax
Oscar Noriega - clarinet
Matt Mitchell - piano

1- Studious quietude, with a stormy composed part in the middle. Ends with slow dramatic surges. Good place to start if you're a fan of ECM in general.
2- Faster stuff: perky and bouncy. Great intro to that choppy, herky-jerky Berne composing style.
3- 1st half quiet: Slow, foreboding entry, into a warm but spare clarinet solo and an inviting, mellow sax/piano part. 2nd half: midtempo but strongly driven. Sometimes delicate, sometimes stormy. Finishes big.
4- Gentle but not slow, a warm mood. Starts with a mid/fast criss-cross theme. Excellent clarinet solo, between classical and avant-jazz, then a nicely warm but exploratory sax solo.
5- Bustling, a busy intro. Gets quiet early on, but it's rather busy throughout and gets downright burly. Winds up neatly.
6- Calm mid/fast, even playful -- it's restrained and relaxing but keeps things moving. And then it builds up to a big sound for the finish.