has made a career out of creating separate identities for the ensembles he creates to perform his music. From his early band, , to the legendary sextet, to , (who issued an album simultaneously on this same label), and . is, in a sense, a mirror image of ; the tunes are written for extended purposes: elongated harmonics, striking color shifts, and strident multi-dimensional textures. plays alto and flute, plays acoustic guitar, plays oud, and there's on tuba, on cello, and on drums. This is a kind of that has its roots in the seam of Eastern and Western music. songs, , and even music all intertwine here and are fleeced with music from both sides of the continent. The opener, makes listeners keenly aware of what 's MO is, with its crisscrossing violin and tuba lines over the angular guitar chords and 's own loping flute lines. On the alto and the oud are at seemingly cross-purposes, or at least rhythm. The has elements of and music woven through 's distinctive punchy phrasing. Finally, rings with an old-style New Orleans flair, even as it reinvents the Western harmonic line, clogging it first with a host of shifting sonorities and then with three simultaneous melody lines in differing harmonic veins. This is a fun, deft, and smart record. is more on his game as a composer and as a bandleader than at any point in his career. ~ Thom Jurek