Riverrun

Pianist/composer Tom Richards makes music way outside the lines, but with eerie familiarity. Unravel blends live-feel improv with post-production alchemy. "Ohrid" combines environmental sounds, water, vehicles and a strange distant keyboard. Quick cut to drums, bass and a sparse, wandering piano solo and then another to drastically down-sampled, granulated piano that emerges into normalcy and much-processed, sustained clarinet tones that get back to business for Peter Lutek's klezmer-inflected solo. "Aisuchi" has multi-tracked, Asian-sounding clarinet and a fevered, distorted piano outing driven by Scott Peterson's meaty bass and the grooving drums of Jake Oelrichs. It all ends with backwards-then-forwards Lutek licks — sincerely weird. Riverrun "builds" its tunes: "Unravel" grows from soft-bowed bass and processed clarinet, yielding to twinkling electronic starlight. This is followed by a melodic interlude, then a Lutek solo — mesmerizing and intense. Every tune is intriguing and unpredictable. Riverrun is setting a high standard for the originality of their compositions and the innovative use of audio morphing. Cool addition: it's released on a USB with added videos.