This album follows on from PM1315 David Panton’s One Music Ensemble 2015 and, like that previous album, it features overdubs by multi-instrumentalist David Panton, except that here, apart from one entirely improvised track, it consists mainly of improvisations based on thematic ideas which were written in memory of various people involved, in one way or another, with free/avant-garde/contemporary jazz and improvisation, and identified only by their initials - a sort of Enigma Variations. But these tracks are not, as pointed out in the liner notes to PM1315, ‘…..variations on a [general] theme or portraits created by pastiche or imitation, rather they are standalone pieces which deliver personal tributes on their own terms [and] have distinctive thematic ideas which open and close each piece and which provide the base upon which the intervening extended improvisations develop.’ Instrumentation includes Panton on bagpipes, keyboard bass, digital drum set, soprano saxophone, alto saxophone, and piano and were multi-track recorded by him during the period 2014-16. The major difficulty of working in this way is in creating a sense of the spontaneity of an improvised live performance when there is inevitably a long delay between laying down the initial track – in this case the main solo instrument playing the thematic ideas and then developing them – and adding chordal, bass and rhythmic lines together with any additional counterpoint and/or solo lines. Hopefully, for the listener, this has been achieved by dispensing with any click tracks and allowing the additional tracks to be created by active listening and response to what has previously been laid down, as though hearing it for the first time, as would be the case in live performance. It should also be noted that there are no specific time-signatures, tempi, chords, counterpoint etc which are all improvised afresh each time, the only constant being the thematic ideas presented by the lead/solo instrument as spontaneously and freely as one might begin a totally free improvisation.

There are plans for live performances of the musical ideas contained in this and the previously overdubbed album, initially as a real trio version of the One Music Ensemble, and hopefully a future album release of those performances, but these and other multi-tracked overdubbed recordings remain a definitive interpretation by Panton of his own ideas. Enjoy.