The 16 Deadly Improvs is a project that sees a collective of New Jersey based musicians coming together to create improvised music that incorporates a wide variety of musical styles. The Revenge of The 16 Deadly Improvs is the fourth installment in their ongoing series, and the music on this disc was culled from a single two and half hour recording session back in early 2007.
Stylistically speaking the musical performances are pretty much all over the map but it's all done with a degree of subtlety. Because even though each track should be considered as a single entity on its own, there isn't a wide disparity from track to track to disrupt the all round cohesive nature of these compositions. Primarily instrumental (a handful of songs feature vocals or spoken word) these musicians slide gracefully from one genre to another with relative ease. Jazz idioms mesh perfectly with traces of progressive rock, post rock, ambient and experimental to create a completely refreshing listening experience. What also stands out is just how structured these improvisational pieces sound, and it's only really on the final track, the thirteen minute "UnEarthly Reprise" space rock freak out, that things feel like a free for all jam session.
All in all The Revenge of The 16 Deadly Improvs is a rock solid, seventy minute plus effort from top to bottom that is both full of risk and reward.
Track Listing
1) UnEarthly
2) Brave Archer
3) Don't Move
4) Flammenwerfer
5) When The Tail Hits, The Hand Reacts
6) The Fall
7) In The Black
8) Spectrum: MMVII B.C.
9) The 80's
10) Open
11) Cyclopean
12) Tongues Of The Moon
13) 2/9
14) Marco Polo vs. The 4 Assassins
15) Quiet American
16) UnEarthly Reprise
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