They say that jazz is not just about the notes you do play, but also about the notes you don't play. I don't think that the M-KAT ensemble got the message, and frankly that's a good thing. M-KAT Ensemble is a San Francisco based quartet featuring Marc Pino on percussion, Kersti Abrams on woodwinds and m’bira, Andrew Joron on theremin, and Thomas Harrison Jr on bass. The label describes the disc as taking “inspiration from Sun Ra, world music, dark-ambient drone, and avant-rock. This band builds its real-time compositions into structures that resemble the termite towers of Namibia or chemical clocks on the far side of the Moon.” Sounds good, so let’s get into it.

I put this on and was greeted with some pretty straightforward improvisational jazz. As a drummer myself I appreciate Pino’s percussion, which is fantastic. To describe Pino’s style, imagine taking a drum set and throwing it down a flight of stairs. Loop that, and you’re pretty much there. Still, after a few tracks of this, I started to wonder why this was sent to Chain DLK. I mean, where is the Sun Ra, where things are fast, intense, and crazy? We get there, but M-KAT Ensemble first lulls you into a false sense of security by building from a very slow, sparse beginning and, like the proverbial frog being boiled, you eventually wind up in a crazy mix of high intensity jazz without really knowing quite how you got there. But you’re glad that you did.

I had some hope that with the mbira and theremin in the mix it would get weird, and weird it got in Duration 4. This is all over the place and a fantastic ride. Here’s where the mbira comes in and the woodwinds are completely out of control. You can almost imagine Lovecraft’s blind idiot god Azathoth piping in the center of chaos. The flute (or recorder, or whatever it was) was all over the place and the track as a whole is scraping and noisy and just overall a good time. For Duration 5 it dials it back a little bit and we get back into some more of the improvisational jazz but we haven’t quite left the experimental side of things.

There are moments where it's not quite as intense, such as the interesting drone over the music in Duration 6, but this is held in contrast with the moments where they dive headfirst into grinding and scraping noise. In short, if you like experimental jazz, this is well worth picking up. This album weighs in at around 72 minutes.