METTE RASMUSSEN Vinyl & CDs

Review: The "Oblique Strategies" is best known as a deck of creative-block-busting cards, but it's also the name of this fresh project from jazz legend Joe McPhee, recorded in Antwerp in 2018 in the company of Mette Rasmussen's fire-breathing alto saxophone and Dennis Tyfus's post-Fluxus antics on tape, voice, and percussion. Rasmussen and Tyfus have previously recorded together as Bazuinschal, and some similar strategies are on display here: mysterious metallic scrapes, wordless guttural exclamations for voice, extended tones in which voice and sax become indistinguishable, comic explosions of varispeed tape. Arriving in a striking sleeve adorned with Tyfus' drawings, Oblique Strategies is an invigoratingly free-spirited blast of improvisation.