Violinist Jeff Gauthier has been quietly making records for about eight years. His last project with the Jeff Gauthier Goatette comprised of guitarist Nels Cline, his brother, drummer Alex, bassist Joel Hamilton, and pianist/keyboardist David Witham. As on 2002's shining Mask, Gauthier and his band delve deep into exotic textures and musics here, not as trope or gimmick, but as compositional and improvisation modus operandi. We're not talking Les Baxter or Martin Denny, we're talking genres. There's classical, which becomes the steady meandering melody line in the opener "Ahfufat," as Nels goes mental in the background and Alex offers a triple time signature for everything to drop from before the work pulses toward something else entirely — a particularly knotty jazz-rock. It's beautiful, barely held on the rail, but is also light and airy. As has been Gauthier's and Nels and Alex Cline's wont, a fine post-fusion jazz tune by the late Eric von Essen is present, "Solflicka," and is performed with elegance, grace, and a harmonic sense of adventure with Gauthier leading the way. The foreboding sense of terror in Bennie Maupin's "Water Torture," with its built, and then extrapolated upon series of tensions, is easily one of the most frightening in recent vanguard jazz history. Hamilton's bass anchors a deafening space that is touched upon by fleeting, angry instrumental flourishes before being indulged with a skeletal, and brief, melody. It becomes pure cinematic dynamic as Nels'