Stefan Dill Trio Run For Heaven

Late Wednesday night, stuck on one of those niggly little work problems that send you round in circles, throw you into a rut and suck the very life from your brain. Yep, this head's a mess and inspiration would still be a stranger if it got up and did some face slapping right now. But maybe that's also because the final track has just spun it's last nasal squawk from three days of listening exclusively to the entire Bob Dylan back catalogue and now something more musically extreme is desperately needed. Something to make the hairs stand up and pay attention. Grab the first one off the top of the inbox pile.

Hmmm. What's this? Run For Heaven. Ok.

That's more like it! What a shot in the arm the Stefan Dill Trio deliver. Pete Cosey wah-wah, Zappa angst and Mahavishnu vocabulary, but ultimately this has the same extraordinary metered chaos born in Lifetime.

What was it about Lifetime? Simply, it was a comprehensive manifesto for all that was to come in amplified jazz-rock and fusion (Tower). Shattering the boundaries between jazz and rock by creating dense, adventurous, unpredictable soundscapes (Allmusic). Absolutely unlike any other instrumental sound ever heard (Gleason).

The acerbic jazz-rock captured on Run For Heaven is improvised in its entirety and centres around Stefan Dill's guitar work, packed with Hendrix inspired blues licks and string bends, coupled with John McLaughlin out there raw energy bursting into beautifully sustained feedback parries with bass and drums, entwined to form this free jazz trio's bold statement.

Elsewhere plump acoustic guitar and bass splish splash through flamenco heat and ice, conjoining in a true fusion, while the last time I heard something similar to the next track intro was in a monastry on the Rongbuk glacier. But fragile chimes and rattles, thick skin drums and Yak bells soon give way to the most Lifetime-like music this side of Turn It Over. Is this what they were trying to achieve on Emergency? I wonder. If only there was a Hammond in there too.

To coin a well known phrase, "it's music Jim, but not as we know it". To coin another, "do yourself a favour, buy Run For Heaven". Don't miss this chance in a Lifetime.