Ravi Padmanabha/Daniel Carter - Nivesana (Epoch Music, 2006) *****

I am sorry, but I keep finding music of exceptional quality. This is one more : absolutely marvelous and hard to find. Daniel Carter is a trumpet player, sax player and flautist, who is, next to his own productions (worth checking out), also known for his collaborations in high calibre free jazz bands such as "Other Dimensions In Music" and "Test". This album is different, and at the beginning very comparable to Compassion the 2006 album by Wadada Leo Smith and Adam Rudolph. If you like the latter, you'll enjoy this one too : the combination of instruments and the angle of appraoch are very similar : free improv of horn and percussion. The percussionist here is the in the US residing Indian Ravi Padmanabha, whom I did not know, and who brings lots of power to this CD. His percussion is sometimes used as background sound (placed in loops sometimes), for the slower pieces, rather than as rhythmic support. Daniel Carter's playing is gorgeous, especially on trumpet, with long soft meditating tones, without real melody yet without being dissonant either. The pièce-de-résistance is the long high energy work-out on "Maka Supreme/Takadinkataka", where on a repetitive Indian vocal, an electrifying duet of sax and drums undulates over softer passages to high intensity pyrotechnics and back to softer moods. Above all, this is great, authentic music with its own voice and a very tight logic kept throughout the album, despite the variation of instruments, tempi and moods. Highly recommended!