Evan Parker; saxophones
Barry Guy; bass
Paul Lytton; tympani, percussion, live electronics
FURT [Richard Barrett / Paul Obermayer]; electronics
Lawrence Casserley; signal processing instrument
Walter Prati; live processing
Marco Vecchi; sound projection

Set is a three-part suite that tops-and-tails a central 40 minute concert performance with two five minute pieces laid down in the studio. The joins don’t show; it sounds like a tightly integrated whole although, reading between the lines of Parker’s notes, it perhaps wasn’t conceived as such. The sound mix of all three parts, in any case, is excellent. Though I haven’t yet been able to discern any overall structure I’m more than content to lose myself in the details.

The title and dedication is for SET, or Serial Endosymbiosis Theory, which seeks, Parker notes, to “explain biological evolution in terms of symbiotic associations of non-cellular organisms”. Set looks for correspondences between this theory and the ways in which Parker seeks to organise the “pre-existing musical structures” that the various ad-hoc alliances - FURT, Parker/Guy/Lytton, and their various duo partnerships - of the collective contributors bring to the ensemble.

All of the musicians here have contributed to Parker’s Electro-Acoustic Ensemble, and Set explores ways in which live musicians and sound processors can feed off each other in real time much as the E-A E’s work does. The way in which SET differs from an E-A E piece isn’t spelled out, except in as much as the pre-existing relationships between individual cohorts within the ensemble retain their importance here. That’s presumably why the main movement in particular progresses through a sequence of distinct passages; for example a passage for live electronics gives way, at around the 30 minute mark, to percussion from Lytton and Guy. Clearly it’s necessary for the ?live’ performers to feed the sound processors, and this obviously imposes limitations on the form the piece can take. Set seeks to explore these limitations. This is all very interesting, but all of this explication can only serve to obscure how immediately compelling the record is.

Whereas the interactions of the Electro-Acoustic Ensemble can be so densely layered and inter-contextualised that what’s happening remains opaque, no matter how attentive the listener, the principle attractions of Set are purely musical: the responsiveness of the performers to each other, and their often sublime musicality. There is a moment, 20 minutes into part 2, at which a solo by Parker is taken up and mutated by processing. It is all the more impressive and purely enjoyable for the process being so transparent. As the only horn player, Parker’s sound slices through the interwoven textures and cross-fertilized improvisations of the ensemble with a clarity that is immensely pleasurable, no matter how familiar Parker’s usual tropes may be.

Set is much more successful than the over-elaborate recordings that the Electro-Acoustic Ensemble has latterly delivered for ECM. It’s perhaps no accident that Set ranks alongside the comparably, if more formally episodic Boustrophedron (2008, ECM) among Parker’s very best works for large ensembles.

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